Mechanical, thermal and robotic weeding for minimising laborious hand-weeding in row crops

Summary

Intra-row weeds constitute a major challenge in organic row crops and research has mainly aimed at replacing laborious hand weeding with mechanization. A number of investigations have focussed on optimising the use of thermal and mechanical methods and this paper reviews the major results achieved for horticultural and agricultural row crops. Mechanical methods, such as weed harrowing, finger weeding and torsion weeding, have provided promising results in transplants. In direct-sown row crops, however, successful weed control requires a strategy where mechanical methods applied post-emergence are preceded by pre-emergence flaming for the control of early and problematic weed cohorts. New methods, such as robotic weeding for row crops with abundant spacing between individual crop plants and band-steaming for row crops developing dense crop stands, have been introduced recently. They are seen as the future directions of new solutions for intra-row weed control in row crops.