Weeds

Weeds are generally classified as plants that grown in places where they are unwanted or cause damage. Therefore any plant can be a weed under the right circumstances. The control of weed in the Quinoa production is problematic because of the slow growth of the plant during the first two weeks after emerge. Some common weeds in the Quinoa production are pigweed, Kochia, Lamsquaters and sunflower. Moreover there are problems to separate wild mustard and sunflower from the Quinoa seed. Commercially herbicides are used to control weeds during crop production however there are no registered herbicides for quinoa at this time. What can be deducted at this time is however,  that the competition from weeds is much greater when quinoa is planted later in the growing season. Moreover numbers of some weeds such as Kochia and Lamsquaters can be reduced when field irrigation is followed by cultivation before seeding.  On the other side pigweed emerges later in the growing season depending on the cultivation practices. Therefore it might be an effective way to control pigweed by planting quinoa on an earlier stage which gives quinoa a good start before the pigweed even has the opportunity to emerge. In general it can be seen that the emergence of weeds can be controlled by methods which are linked to organic farming systems such as crop rotation. These methods are seen as more sustainable than the weed control used in intensive farming systems. (E.A.Oelke, 1992)

References

E.A.Oelke, D. P. (1992). Year accessed: 2016 from Quinoa : https://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/afcm/quinoa.html