05 October 2024, New Delhi: ICAR-Directorate of Weed Research, Jabalpur, organised a brainstorming session in collaboration with the Federation of Seed Industry of India (FSII) at AP Shinde Hall, NASC, Pusa, New Delhi, today.
The Chief Guest, Dr S.K. Choudhari, Deputy Director General, Natural Resources Management, ICAR, highlighted the importance of weed management in enhancing crop productivity and environmental sustainability. He also emphasized climate change impacts on weeds and weed management, challenges in weed management in conservation agriculture, natural farming, organic farming, and regenerative agriculture. Weed management is very important for quality seed production to check the weed spread in new areas, he added.
The Guest of Honor, Dr P K Singh, Agriculture Commissioner, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Govt of India, emphasized the potential losses in productivity of various crops due to weed infestation, and therefore a robust weed management framework involving traditional, mechanical, and chemical methods is urgently needed. Moreover, weed management strategies need to be aligned with broader agricultural policy to ensure the optimization of resource usage, reducing crop losses, and enhancing productivity. A technologically innovative, holistic, and integrated approach will be the way forward, he remarked.
Special Guest, Dr DK Yadava, Assistant Director General (Seeds), ICAR, highlighted the importance of weed management in quality seed production, varietal development, and crop management. SOPs/Good agricultural practices for new technologies like HT rice, need to be developed.
Special Guest, Dr Rajbir Singh, Assistant Director General (A, AF & CC), ICAR, emphasized the development of herbicide-resistant crop varieties, issues in herbicide-resistant weeds and their management, weed management in an aquatic system, non-cropped areas, etc.
Dr J.S. Mishra, Director, ICAR-Directorate of Weed Research, highlighted the emerging challenges in weed management and potential threats of weeds in agriculture.
Dr Ajay Rana, Chairman, FSII, highlighted the losses caused by weeds and competition offered on various resources. He highlighted that weed competition caused a 15-90 reduction in productivity. Herbicide-tolerant rice genotypes have great potential to promote rice cultivation in the DSR system and management of weedy rice, he added.
Dr AK Singh, Former Director, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Prof Deepal Pental, Former Vice-Chancellor, Delhi University, and Dr NT Yaduraju, Former Director, ICAR-DWR, were also present during the programme.
A book on Wecds: Impacts on Indian Agriculture and its Mitigation Strategies was released on the occasion.
Around 100 participants, including scientists, industry personnel, and students from various organizations, attended the programme.
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