Opportunities for biological weed control in Europe

摘要

The development and application of biological weed control offer great opportunities not only for farmers, nature conservationists and other vegetation managers but also for institutions and companies that wish to sell plant protection services and products, and for the general public that demands safe food and a visually attractive and diverse environment. Despite the obvious opportunities for biological weed control, few control agents are actually being used in Europe. Potential agent organisms have features that make them particularly strong and useful for biological control, but they also have weaknesses. Weaknesses included a too narrow or too wide host specificity, lack of virulence, or sensitivity to unfavourable environmental conditions. Developing specific knowledge on the interaction between weeds and potential biological control agents, as well as expertise to increase the effect of control agents and so achieve sufficient weed control in a cost-effective manner, should have the highest priority in research programmes. From 1994 to 2000 most ongoing research on biological weed control in Europe was combined in a cooperative programme. This COST Action concentrated on the interactions between five target crop weeds and their antagonists (pathogens and insects), on further characterisation of the specific belms and potential control agents and on the most suitable biological control approach. The next major challenge will be to apply the findings provided by COST-816 to the development of practical control solutions. The leading objective of a new concerted research programme with European dimensions will be to stabilise or even promote biodiversity in the most important European ecosystems by integrating biological weed control in the management of these systems.