ABSTRACT
Although the utilization of microbial plant pathogens for biological control of weeds was first conceptualized in the early 1900s, significantly greater attention and research in pursuit of specific fungal pathogens for control of target weed species did not begin until the 1970s. Several recent reviews have described the various types of biological control approaches and provide examples of pathogens that have been successfully commercialized or are at various stages of development (Charudattan, 1991; Watson, 1991; TeBeest, Yang, and Cisar, 1992; Boyetchko, 1999; Rosskopf, Charudattan, and Kadir, 1999; Charudattan, 2000; Boyetchko et al., 2002). Despite the accumulated wealth of information on biological weed control, examples of their application as components of integrated pest management (IPM) programs are often limited. This differs in comparison to the numerous studies on biocontrol of insects, but is most likely a result of the significantly greater and long-standing activity in biocontrol by entomologists over the past 100 years or so (Mason and Huber, 2002).
