ABSTRACT
Sustainable wheat farming is dependent on successful weed management. Herbicide use has been and continues to be the most effective and common method of weed control in wheat cultivation. However, in terms of the number of global herbicide-resistant weed species, wheat leads all other crops. As herbicide efficacy continues to be threatened by resistant weeds, there is an urgent need to discover and utilize practices that will allow growers to use herbicide less often and thereby reduce selection pressure for weed resistance. Cultural weed management tools have more subtle effects than herbicides. Therefore, it is important that researchers, agronomists and growers have realistic expectations regarding the efficacy of individual cultural tools. It is also important that more than one tool is integrated with other methods to achieve a suitable level of weed management. The use of regionally adapted optimal IWM systems will allow less frequent herbicide use without negative weed population consequences.
