Status and Prospect of Weed Control Technology for Organic Farming

유기농업을 위한 잡초방제기술의 현재 미래

Organic farming excludes any use of the herbicide. The present paper reviews what can be done for effective weed control with existing weed control technology by farmers crop-ping paddy rice, field crops, vegetables, and fruit trees. If condition of the crop-land-al-lows diversified rotational use of the paddy land as paddy and upland field would minimize weed problem. Practising this is limited in acreage due to extremely limited governmental investment to the land for the purpose. Secondly, rotation of crops in the upland field breaking life cycles of various weeds adapted to each crop should reduce the weed problem. This is also limited as only a few crops are making the farmer profitable. In addition climate and tolerance of crops to high and low temperature. Monsoon rains and poor drainage restrict the freedom of choice. For any crop land year-round multiple cropping in denser planting shall lessen the weed problem, this multiple cropping practiced by 1960s has been abandoned due to laborshortage and increased production cost. Deep flooding the rice is impractical at present in Korean. Mulching crop with transparent, black , or combinated polyethylene sheet, hs been in-creasingly used. Progresses in development and use of mulch with allelopathic crop residues. inexpensive paper mulch, allelopathic crop residues, inexpensive paper mulch, allelopathic crop cultivar development, recently developed ex-perimental weeding machinaries, flamers, microbial herbicides, biological control organisms, soil sterilization techniques have been critically reviewed for their adoption into existing in-tegrated weeding system. Unfortunately, information on cost-benifit, and labor-benefit, for the various methods above mentioned are lacking. Urgent need for the research on rational weeding in organic farming, and herbicide low-input farming is emphasized.