Weed Management Role in Meeting the Global Food and Nutrition Security Challenge

Abstract

The global agricultural production must increase by around 70% to meet the food and nutrition demands of 9.9 billion people, by 2050. It was predicted that 670 million people will still be undernourished in 2030. Hence, feasible and cost-effective strategies in the global agri-food system need to be implemented for meeting nutrition security. Weed management played a key role in achieving global food and nutrition security, till to date. In this paper the role of weed management in meeting food and nutrition security is revisited in view of the changed scenario of prevailing unintended ecological imbalance, climate change, water overuse and waste, soil degradation, loss of natural resource quality, and declines in biodiversity, increased herbicide use, and chemical runoff that are decreasing crop growth yields and raising reasonable concerns about the sustainability of the current agricultural methods in meeting the future food and nutrition security. The future role of weed management is discussed in terms of: reducing the continued losses caused by weeds and improving crops productivity and production by reducing yield gap; improving resources (land, water, light, nutrients); improving farmers income; advancement of farmers livelihood; combating climate change and balancing biodiversity. The possible role of climate resilient integrated weed management in playing the intended roles in agri-food system is discussed. In order to play much more sustainable role, the weed management, as an integral part of agricultural production, needs to move away from its mono-disciplinary perspective at targeting weeds to multidisciplinary and multifaceted technological solution to serve as a component of overall technological solutions to improve agricultural production for achieving ever increasing food and nutritional security challenges.