Allelopathy and Agricultural Sustainability: Implication in weed management and crop protection—an overview

Abstract

Crop plants have defined roles in agricultural production and feeding the world. They are affected by several environmental and biological stresses, which range from soil salinity, drought, and climate change to exposure to diverse plant pathogens. These stresses pose risk to agricultural sustainability. To avoid the increasing biotic and abiotic pressure on crop plants, agrochemicals are extensively used in agriculture for attaining desirable yield and production of crops. However, the use of agrochemicals is also challenging the integrity of ecosystems. Thus, to maintain the integrity of ecosystem, sustainable measures for elevated crop production are required. Allelopathy, a process of chemical interactions between plants and other organisms, could be used in the management of several biotic and abiotic stresses if the basic mechanisms of the phenomena and plants with allelopathic potentials are known. Allelopathy has a promising future for its application in agriculture for natural weed management, improving soil health and suppressing plant diseases. The aim of this review is to discuss the importance of allelopathy in agriculture and its role in sustainability with a specific focus on weed management and crop protection.

Effects of potential allelochemicals in a water extract of Abutilon theophrasti Medik. on germination and growth of Glycine max L., Triticum aestivum L., and Zea mays L

“…The crop-weed allelopathic interaction, in particular for exploiting allelopathic crop cultivars to control intractable weeds, has become an important alternative for sustainable agriculture. 46 Allelopathic weeds generally affect the growth of adjacent crop plants by the release of allelochemicals; however, crop plants can modulate their biomass allocation in response to the infesting weeds. 47 For effective control, it is important to understand allelopathy in velvetleaf-cropping system (soybean, wheat, and maize).…”

Assessment of Glyphosate Impact on the Agrofood Ecosystem

“…Indeed, the use of different genetic engineering techniques as RNA interference (RNAi) [ 3 , 32 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 ], chimeric RNA/DNA oligonucleotides [ 39 ], and gene-editing techniques (GM), such as CRISPR/Cas9 or CRISPR/Cpf1 [ 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 ] technology, might be useful for this purpose. The best approach to prevent resistant weeds is to use a combined weed management, and herbicides will likely be partly replaced with new technologies such as, among others, research on crop allelopathy [ 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 ] and engineering of microbial control agents [ 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 ]. Progress in these technologies is expected to allow methods for weed control to be used in an integrated manner with the aim of maximizing diversity in weed control and minimizing resistance.…”