Studies on molecular diagnostics in weed science: Application of molecular methods for herbicide resistance in weeds

Weeds have proved to be a huge cause of yield loss in the past and are still a recurring problem. Weeds harbor many pests and virus and bacterial carrying vectors. To date the most effective methods of control have been herbicides. Herbicides are very effective but come at a huge cost to the environment and lately there were many cases of ineffective herbicides that used to effectively control weeds. This can be referred to as herbicide resistance (HR). HR can be referred to as the genetically inherited ability of a plant to withstand toxins that usually when applied kill it. This problem has led to the invent and need to come up with not just environmentally friendly control measures but also highly effective alternate methods of weed control. To date many have been devised like allelopathy but is not 100% effective. Molecular diagnostics is a set of methods used to analyze biological markers in the genome and proteome–the genetic code and how cells express their genes as proteins. The main focus of this paper is a deeper look into molecular weed diagnosis (MWD), the various methods of HR in weeds and methods of control that have been devised from results collected. © 2020, Gaurav Society of Agricultural Research Information Centre. All rights reserved.