article · Agriculture
Weeds represent a major biotic stress, whilst drought and salinity are critical abiotic challenges affecting vegetable and field crop growth and yield. These stresses trigger oxidative damage through the overproduction of reactive oxygen species such as superoxide and hydrogen peroxide within plant cell compartments. Elevated reactive oxygen species impair fundamental physiological processes, including water uptake, relative water content, and photosynthesis, alongside increasing electrolyte leakage. To defend against this damage, plants rely on enzymatic antioxidants like catalase, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione reductase, as well as non-enzymatic compounds including ascorbic acid, proline, carotenoids, and flavonoids to scavenge harmful molecules. Managing weed damage involves integrated control approaches such as allelopathy, crop rotation, and herbicides. Understanding these physiological mechanisms and management practices aids efforts to enhance crop tolerance, growth, and overall yields under combined environmental pressures.
Environmental stresses and weed competition severely restrict crop productivity and food production worldwide. Identifying the physiological pathways of oxidative damage and natural antioxidant defence systems enables the development of integrated farming practices. By combining weed management strategies with methods that bolster stress tolerance, growers can better protect crop health and stabilise agricultural yields under challenging environmental conditions.
The review outlines approaches relevant to agricultural chemical developers, plant breeders, and farm managers seeking to mitigate biotic and abiotic stresses. Potential applications include formulating integrated weed management programmes combining allelopathy, rotation, and herbicides, or developing crop treatments that stimulate protective antioxidant systems. Because the text presents a review of existing physiological and management mechanisms, it represents early-stage foundational knowledge rather than a ready-to-market technology or validated commercial product.
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Weeds are one of the most damaging biotic stresses in crop production, and drought and salinity are considered the most serious abiotic stresses. These factors harmfully affect growth and development in several vegetable and field crops by causing harmful effects on physiological and biochemical characteristics such as water uptake, photosynthesis, relative water content, electrolyte leakage, and antioxidant compounds linked with oxidative stress and the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). These oxidative stress-related components affect most physiological and biochemical characteristics in plants under natural conditions and environmental stresses, especially weed infestation, salinity, and drought stress. ROS such as superoxide (O2•−), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), peroxyl radical (ROO•), and singlet oxygen (1O2) are very important molecules produced naturally as by-products of metabolic processes in chloroplasts, mitochondria, peroxisomes, and the apoplast. Under stress conditions such as weed infestation, drought and salinity, the morphological and yield characteristics of stressed plants are negatively affected; however, superoxide (O2•−) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) are significantly increased. The negative impact of weeds can be mitigated with integrated controls which include herbicides, allelopathy, and crop rotation as well as the different methods for weed control. The defense system in various crops mainly depends on both enzymatic and nonenzymatic antioxidants. The enzymatic antioxidants include superoxide dismutase, glutathione reductase, and catalase; nonenzymatic antioxidants include ascorbic acid, carotenoids, α-Tocopherols, proline, glutathione, phenolics, and flavonoids. These antioxidant components can scavenge various ROS under several stresses, particularly weeds, drought and salinity. In this review, our objective is to shed light on integrated weeds management and plant tolerance to salinity and drought stresses associated with the ROS and the induction of antioxidant components to increase plant growth and yield in the vegetable and field crops.
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DOI: 10.3390/agriculture12122084
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