Italian Journal of Agronomy (Apr 2008)

Weed sustainable managment in agricultral and non-agricultural areas

  • Pierluigi Meriggi,
  • Cesare Sparacino,
  • Giovanni Arcangeli

DOI
https://doi.org/10.4081/ija.2008.1s.35

Abstract

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Sustainable agriculture is a way to assure the availability of natural resources for future generations.Weed management in cultivated and not cultivated areas is part of sustainable agriculture as well, and has to face three important challenges: economical (to increase income and competitiveness of farm sector), social (give rural areas opportunity of economic development and improvement of living conditions), environmental (promote good agricultural practices and preserve habitats, biodiversity and landscape). The first two challenges involve the in-depth study of models, the economic threshold of intervention, the management of herbicide resistance phenomena, the study and development of new herbicide molecules, or even modern formulations, leading to the optimization of treatments with possible reduction of distributed doses per hectare. Environmental issues must be set in the studies to assess and manage the factors leading to phenomena of diffuse or point pollution (i.e. water volumes, soil, etc.). However, a sustainable agriculture production must take into account consumers’ needs and concerns, especially about food health and safety with respect to production methods (traditional, integrated and biological). In this context, the results obtained by the development of more advanced active principles, the spread of public and private Integrated Production Specifications (Disciplinari di Produzione Integrata) and the greater and greater commitment by the institutions in charge of monitoring the agro-pharmaceutical residues in agro-food products, can be set. The SIRFI SIRFI (Società Italiana per la Ricerca sulla Flora Infestante), thanks to the multi-disciplinarity of the structures supporting it, always takes an active part into innovation especially aimed to the identification of tools implementing farm activity sustainability.