Incidence of thermophilic, grass and rare arable weeds in cereal fields in the Czech and Slovak Republic

Abstract

The two currently independent countries -the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic -have a common historical development. During the period of shared national identity from 1918-1992, agriculture completely changed and the agricultural policy of one state largely unified conditions throughout the whole country (Krejčí and Machonin 1996). In the second half of the century, there was violent collectivisation, large-scale socialist management and further intensification of agriculture especially resulting in the existence of large farms with large areas of land, narrow crop rotations, high doses of mineral fertilisers and the broad application of herbicides (Grešlová-Kušková 2013, Pinke 2020). The introduction of a new political market economy regime after 1989 combined with private property restitution, privatisation of state property and transformation of agricultural cooperatives (Kanianska et al. 2014).Of course, these changes also affected weed communities and diversity. Intensive farming in large