Vol. 10, Issue 5 (2021)

Author(s):
Monika Menia, BC Sharma and Jyoti Sharma

Abstract:
Organic agriculture, a holistic production system that sustains health of soils, ecosystems and people by relying on ecological processes, bio diversity and natural cycles adapted to local conditions, rather than use of inputs with adverse effects. Weed represents about 0.1% of the weed flora. The most serious threat to organic crop production is considered to weeds. Weed can suppress crop yield by competing for environmental resources such as light, moisture, nutrients and space. Fast-developing herbicide-resistant ecotypes of weeds due to increased herbicide application is another serious threat for agriculture production. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop alternative weed control methods for use in agroecosystems. Xuan et al. (2005) evaluated allelopathic potential of different crops and plant parts against rice weeds and observed 25 to 91% reduction in weed population and 20 to 80% increase in rice yield due to allelochemicals present in different plants. Effective weed management on organic farms requires extensive planning and preventing measure coupled with cultural method and bio control method are the basis for successful organic farming and are necessary for breaking weed cycles. Jamshidi et al. (2013) conducted a study on effects of maize planting density and cowpea living mulch on weed above ground biomass (g/m²) per species and total at harvest time and found that the use of cowpea as a living mulch had a significant effect on weed biomass. Kumari and Saini (2018) conducted a field experiment on effect of treatments on total weed dry weight and weed control efficiency in organically grown wheat at Palampur, Himachal Pradesh and reported that stale seed bed resulted into significantly lower total weed dry matter and higher weed control efficiency and among different weed management treatments, gram intercropping + one manual hoeing and two manual hoeings are statistically at par with each other that produced significantly lower weed dry weight and highest weed control efficiency over all other treatments. It is worth to focused interdisciplinary long-term research efforts should be initiated to boost the yield of crop plants by minimizing the vagaries of biotic and abiotic stresses.