Herbicide discovery in light of rapidly spreading resistance and ever‐increasing regulatory hurdles

Abstract

According to the United Nations, the global population is expected to grow to almost 10 billion people in 2050. This means that the demand for food, feed and fiber will double while at the same time, agriculture is being challenged by a scarcity of water, global warming, less land available for farming, protection of natural habitats, a demand for biodiversity on farms and other factors. In addition, crop protection products are under pressure from rapidly spreading resistance and increasing regulatory requirements. Many regulatory bodies are also moving away from a risk assessment approach to a more hazard-based approach to grant registrations. Nevertheless, chemical crop protection compounds remain attractive and necessary to combat pests, particularly weeds. Industry has increased its efforts to find new molecules that are highly biologically effective on target species, including resistant populations, but safe for non-target organisms. To manage resistance in the future, a diverse toolbox is needed that includes herbicides with a variety of different chemistries and modes of action, combined with non-chemical measures in integrated systems. However, discovering a herbicide and getting it registered and to the market is an extremely complex endeavor full of risk, much of it incalculable. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry.

The power and potential of genomics in weed biology and management

“…New herbicides are being discovered at a slowing pace and no new modes of action have been marketed in more than 30 years . When new candidate molecules are found, they may not be brought to market for a range of reasons such as insufficient efficacy, narrow range of usefulness, non‐selectivity, inappropriate residual activity, and/or mammalian toxicity . Weed genomics can contribute to new herbicide discovery by helping to: (1) identify the mode of action of new compounds with unknown targets using sequence‐based approaches; (2) discover the target proteins of existing modes of action for which all molecular targets are not yet known (e.g., synthetic auxins, cellulose biosynthesis inhibitors); and (3) design the chemical structure of candidate inhibitors based on potential new molecular targets discovered in the genome.…”

Physiological Approach to the Use of the Natural Compound Quinate in the Control of Sensitive and Resistant Papaver rhoeas

“…Two groups of herbicides that inhibit amino acid biosynthesis are among the most important herbicidal modes of action in global market value [ 1 ]. One of them is glyphosate, whose target site is the 5-enolpyruvylshikimate 3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS) in the aromatic amino acid biosynthetic pathway [ 2 ].…”

Residual herbicides in Roundup Ready soybean: A case study in multiple years and locations with Ipomoea triloba

“…It is native to tropical America and widespread around all regions of Brazil, especially in no-till crop systems due to its large seed size which allows good germination and robust seedling with energy to penetrate the straw layer (Azania et al, 2002). Because glyphosate has not been as efficient as it used to be, the use of pre-emergence herbicides has increased in the United States and Canada (Peters;Strek, 2018), but not as much in others like Brazil and Argentina. This may be attributed to the perception that using residual herbicides is not as simple as post-emergence herbicides, and that several environmental factors can influence their efficacy (e.g.…”