History and current trends in the use of allelopathy for weed management.

This paper briefly describes a variety of weed and crop species that establishes some form of potent allelopathic interference, either with other crops or weeds, in agricultural settings, in the managed landscape, or in naturalized settings. Recent research suggests that allelopathic properties can render one species more invasive to native species and thus potentially detrimental to both the agricultural and naturalized settings. In contrast, allelopathic crops offer strong potential for the development of cultivars that are more highly weed suppressive in the managed settings. A new challenge that exists for plant scientists is to generate additional information on allelochemical mechanisms of release, selectivity and persistence in the rhizosphere, mode of action and genetic regulation.