Weed sustainable managment in agricultral and non-agricultural areas

Sustainable agriculture is a way to assure the availability of natural resources for future generations.Weed managementin cultivated and not cultivated areas is part of sustainable agriculture as well, and has to face three important challenges:economical (to increase income and competitiveness of farm sector), social (give rural areas opportunity of economicdevelopment and improvement of living conditions), environmental (promote good agricultural practices andpreserve habitats, biodiversity and landscape). The first two challenges involve the in-depth study of models, the economicthreshold of intervention, the management of herbicide resistance phenomena, the study and development ofnew herbicide molecules, or even modern formulations, leading to the optimization of treatments with possible reductionof distributed doses per hectare. Environmental issues must be set in the studies to assess and manage the factorsleading to phenomena of diffuse or point pollution (i.e. water volumes, soil, etc.). However, a sustainable agricultureproduction must take into account consumers’ needs and concerns, especially about food health and safety withrespect to production methods (traditional, integrated and biological). In this context, the results obtained by the developmentof more advanced active principles, the spread of public and private Integrated Production Specifications(Disciplinari di Produzione Integrata) and the greater and greater commitment by the institutions in charge of monitoringthe agro-pharmaceutical residues in agro-food products, can be set. The SIRFI SIRFI (Società Italiana per laRicerca sulla Flora Infestante), thanks to the multi-disciplinarity of the structures supporting it, always takes an activepart into innovation especially aimed to the identification of tools implementing farm activity sustainability.