Matt Liebman, “Cultural techniques to manage weeds,” in Integrated weed management for sustainable agriculture, Ed: Robert Zimdahl, 2017, Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing.

SUMMARY:

The focus of this chapter is on cultural techniques that can also contribute to effective weed management strategies, including choice of crop density, crop arrangement, and crop genotype, and manipulation of initial crop size, soil fertility, and soil moisture conditions. Weed management strategies that make use of cultural factors seek to reduce weed density, resource consumption, biomass production and competition with crops. They also seek to prevent colonization of fields by weed species not previously present. Additionally, by altering the availability of light, water and nutrients in space and time, and by challenging weeds with allelochemicals, cultural tactics are intended to improve crop performance. FULL TEXT