Sustainable Agriculture and the Integrated Management of Agricultural Weeds
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Agriculture".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 September 2019) | Viewed by 3490
Special Issue Editors
Interests: agroecology; weed ecology; integrated weed management; sustainable agriculture; biodiversity; diversified cropping systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Despite much research into technological fixes, to most growers around the world yield reduction due to weed competition represents a persistent, undesirable, and almost inevitable problem. This threat is not new, and the negative impacts of weedy plants on farmers’ livelihood have played a central role in agriculture for thousands of years. Since the 1950s, weed science has responded to this concern by focusing its attention on weed eradication, principally through chemical or mechanical approaches. Many times, this approach to weed management has been successful in terms of securing yield and maximizing farm labor efficiency. Despite this, the “silver bullet” approach to managing weeds has, in the long-term, been challenged by off-target impacts, health and environmental concerns, economic considerations, and the selection and spread of herbicide-resistant biotypes. As a result, there is increased interest among weed scientists to shift from weed eradication to the development of a science-based discipline aimed at assessing the biological, evolutionary, and ecological principles driving the spread, abundance, and impacts of weed populations and communities within agricultural landscapes. This knowledge is, in turn, used to combine multiple approaches in the development of integrated weed programs that help increase the overall sustainability of the agricultural enterprise. The goal of this Special Issue is to contribute to the development of such integrated weed management programs with an emphasis on the agroecological, socio‐economic, and technological dimensions of agricultural sustainability.
Prof. Fabian Menalled
Dr. Tim Seipel
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- Agricultural sustainability
- Agroecology
- Biodiversity
- Diversified cropping systems
- Integrated weed management
- Plant competition
- Plant–soil feedbacks
