Alternative Weed Control Methods: A Review

Weed interference is one of the most important limiting factors which decrease crop yields and consequently global food production. Weed represent about 0.1% of the world flora and in agroecosystems, weeds and crops have co-evolved together right from the prehistoric times as revealed by pollen analysis studies (Cousens and Mortimer 1995). Weed can suppress crop yield by competing for environmental resources like water, light and nutrients and production of allelopathic compounds. Therefore, weed manage‐ ment have been a major challenge for crop producers from the start of agriculture. At the earlier times, since no synthetic chemicals were known, weed control was achieved by some methods such as hand weeding, crop rotation, polyculture and other manage‐ ment practices that were low input but sustainable. With the discovery of synthetic her‐ bicides in the early 1930s, there was a shift in control methods toward high input and target-oriented ones (Singh et al. 2003).