Hamid Cheraghian Radi1* and Ali Mohammad Banaei-Moghaddam2
1Department of Microbial Biotechnology, School of Biology and Center of
Excellence in Phylogeny of Living Organisms, College of Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
2Laboratory of Genomics and Epigenomics (LGE), Department of Biochemistry, Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics (IBB), University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
*Corresponding Author: Hamid Cheraghian Radi, Department of Microbial Biotechnology, School of Biology and Center of Excellence in Phylogeny of Living Organisms, College of Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
Received: March 17, 2020; Published: April 17, 2020
Weed plants are one of the main constraints to agriculture and cause considerable crop yield loss besides reducing product quality and leading to health and environmental threats. In comparison to various weed management strategies, biological control-especially mycoherbicides-offer an innovative approach to address this problem. Today, the bio-control of weeds by mycoherbicide (either fungal spore suspension or their metabolites) has received significant academic attention and over the past few decades some of the high profile candidates became commercially available. Employing mycoherbicide proposes benefits including being environmentally friendly, cost effective, and identifying new herbicidal mechanisms. This review focuses on challenges that mycoherbicides encounter before their adoption. Besides, important factors in both selecting and improving a fungal strain as a mycoherbicide are reviewed. Additionally, using integrated weed management as complementary methods to elevate the efficacy of mycoherbicides have been considered.
Keywords: Weed Management; Agriculture; Biological Control; Mycoherbicides
Citation: Hamid Cheraghian Radi., et al. “Biological Control of Weeds by Fungi: Challenges and Opportunities". Acta Scientific Microbiology 3.5 (2020): 62-70.
Copyright: © 2020 Hamid Cheraghian Radi., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.