Weed Management

Integrated Weed Management

Using different means to get the goal

• Weeds are an important limiting factor in farming. They compete with crops for space, water, nutrient, oxygen, light and CO2.

• Presence of certain quantities of weeds can bring the yield near to 0, as showed in charts below.

• Weed control is thus one of the most important operation in farming. Integrated weed management uses several means in limiting the deleterious effects weeds have when growing with crops.

Crop Rotation

Crop rotation as an integrated mean to control weeds

• Crop rotation allows a better weed management, because:
1 - Mechanical weeding is carried out in different seasons and with different working depth.
2 - Chemical weed control is carried out with different active ingredients and affects different weeds.
• As a result, weeds are not selected by resistance to certain herbicides or by crops, so formation of specialized weeds’ population is hindered.
• At the contrary absence of rotation (monocropping, monocolture) make easy the formation of specialized weeds population, which gets very difficult to manage. In certain cases, cropping had to be suspended for 1 or 2 years.

Tillage

Tillage as an integrated mean to control weeds

• Tillage is also a powerful mean in order to manage weed. Different tillage system and operation have different consequences on different groups of weeds, as showed in chart below.