Weeds are the unwanted plants in a community of plant aka
crops or some recreational place or any other place where they are not desired
and they are as harmful and devastating for crops as the diseases so their
management is a must step in a healthy crop stand. Practically there are three
ways for weed management in agriculture in regard to the crop stand.
1. Prevention
2. Control
3. Eradication
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| A farmer plowing the field to uproot weeds and prepare to sow next crop |
Prevention
To prevent the weeds from coming to the crop fields is more
dutiful but perhaps the most practical method with good results. The method of
preventing a given weed from contaminating a given area can be accomplished by
any of the following method;
i) Preventing the mixing of weed seeds in crop seeds
ii) Preventing the weed seeds to come in animal feed
iii) Cleaning the agriculture machinery before and after
bringing to use in field they may be contaminated with weed seeds
iv) Preventing the vegetatively reproducing weeds to come in
contact with crop seeds or water bodies.
v) Cleaning the irrigation drains so that weeds in them do
not spread their seeds into crops.
If these prevention steps are carefully carried out then weed
problem can be reduced to a greater extent and the costs on other farm inputs
such as herbicides can be reduced.
Control
Weed control methods are employed if weeds are present in the
crop fields. the number of weeds is limited to the extent that they cause
minimal damage to crop yields and output of the farm. Control can be done by
physical, chemical, biology or cultural methods depending upon the farm
economics and resources available to the farm. Thus weed control adopted
directly has an impact on the costs of the farm products.
Eradication
Eradication means to completely eliminate a weed from the
given field or any other place. Eradication is usually done for a particular
troublesome weed in a small area of the fields.
Eradication is often expensive and incomplete because it is
very difficult to remove the vegetative propagules or seeds left in the soil.
If soil fumigation is done, it can be hazardous to the environment and often
the herbicides used are persistent in the soil and may reach our stomach
through food chain and these chemicals also have effects on non-target
organisms.
