| Abstrakt: |
Despite the serious threat which weeds offer to organic crop production, relatively little attention has so far been paid to research on weed management in organic agriculture, an issue that is often approached from a reductionist perspective. Compared with conventional agriculture, in organic agriculture weed interactions usually manifest themselves more slowly. It follows that weed management should be tackled in an extended time domain and needs deep integration with the other cultural practices, aiming to optimize the whole cropping system rather than weed control per se. In this respect, cover crop management is an important issue because of its implications for soil, nutrient, pest and weed management. It is stressed that direct (physical) weed control can only be successful where preventive and cultural weed management is applied to reduce weed emergence (e.g. through appropriate choice of crop sequence, tillage, smother D cover crops) and improve crop competitive ability (eg. through appropriate choice of crop genotype, sowing/planting pattern and fertilization strategy). Problem of weeds can be minimized by adopting right and integrated organic weed management approaches which, helps in reducing the competition by weeds without any adverse effect on yield, quality of produce and soil/ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
