Allelopathy: A Natural Way towards Weed Management

To meet the food requirement of the ever-growing population of the world the introduction of pesticides in agriculture was a welcome move to control obnoxious weeds below the threshold limit and thereby reduce the yield loss. But continuous use of synthetic herbicides in heavy doses creates environment pollution and increases the number of herbicide resistant weeds. Hence, researches should be done to find out some natural way for minimizing the dependency on synthetic herbicides. The objective of this article is to review the possibilities for using allelopathy to improve overall potentiality of weeds and crops in natural weed management. Allelopathy is the favorable or adverse effect of one plant on another due to direct or indirect release of chemicals from live or dead plants (including microorganisms). Although we cannot discard use of synthetic herbicides completely at the present situation but their use can be reduced up to a certain extent by utilizing allelopathic potentiality as an alternative weed management strategy for crop production as well as environmental benefits.