Biological control of weeds: A review

Abstract

Weeds are one of the main constraints to agriculture and cause 10-80% crop yield loss besides reducing product quality and leading to health and environmental hazards. Traditionally, weed control in India has been largely dependent on manual weeding. However, increased labour scarcity and costs are encouraging farmers to adopt labour and cost saving options. In comparison to various weed management strategies, biological control offers an innovative approach to address this problem. Biological management of weeds includes the use of living organisms to decrease the effect of weeds to keep at or below desirable level without significantly disturbing the crop plants. It includes use of insects, pathogens, nematodes, parasitic plants and competition plants affecting the adoption of weed biological control and the challenges to promote them are being studied in this article.