The ICAR-Directorate of Weed Research, Jabalpur along with the Indian Society of Weed Science jointly organized a 6-day national training on “Advances in weed management for sustainable agriculture” in virtual mode. The training programme was inaugurated by Dr. S. Bhaskar, Assistant Director-General, Agronomy, Agroforestry & Climate Change. In his inaugural address, Dr. Bhaskar emphasized about the importance of weed management in field crops, horticultural crops and non-crop areas. He also suggested developing and demonstrating location-specific weed management technologies to get sustainable crop production. The valedictory programme was chaired by Dr. R.M. Kathiresan, Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor, Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu, and a renowned weed scientist. He complemented the ICAR-DWR for successfully organizing this training programme for making the large number of participants aware of the technological advancements in weed management. Dr. Kathiresan emphasized on developing need-based collaborative projects for external funding with DST, DBT, Biodiversity authority, etc., on invasive weeds management and utilization, and climate-change induced weed risk assessment.

Earlier, Dr. J.S. Mishra, Director, ICAR-DWR, informed that weeds caused an economic loss of Rs. 70,000 crores annually in ten major field crops. The losses would be much higher, if all crops and systems are included. He also emphasized the importance of weed ecology and biology to understand the behavior of weeds under various agro-ecosystem,and this information could be used for developing an effective weed management technologies. Dr. Sushil Kumar, Principal Scientist and President, ISWS shared his experience about weed management in the non-crop area including aquatic and invasive weeds.

In this training altogether 19 deliberations were scheduled with eminent weed scientists from India and abroad. Around 314 participants including scientists from ICAR, SAUs, IRRI, and Officials from agriculture department, non-governmental organizations & industries, and students were registered, and participated in the training programme. At the end, certificates were distributed to the participants. Training ended with the vote of thanks proposed by Dr. V.K. Choudhary, coordinator of the training programme.