Volume 1 Issue 2

Participatory Weed Assessment for Promoting Precision and Sustainability

Author(s): Debabrata Basu, Sudipta Banerjee, Rupak Goswami, Durba Biswas
Abstract: Participatory Weed Assessment (PWA) is a relatively new approach in weed management that is based on the stakeholders' experience and wisdom over years in a particular agro-ecological environment and it promotes development through more reliable and updated database of weed infestations and management quickly. Though there has been works on weed mapping, especially in combination with Geographic Information System (GIS) or Global Positioning System (GPS), little research has been carried out on participatory weed mapping alone. The current weakness of precision weed management is that of poor capability to create reliable weed maps rapidly and cost etfective\y. Many research projects have used a grid map (i.e. discrete points), and a few have mapped continuously from a specialised vehicle or combine harvester to create weed maps. However, these methods are time consuming and there is still a need to develop an accurate and cost effective weed mapping system. Airborne remote sensing has been identified as a promising technique for mapping weeds in crops and pastures. The combinatioo of these two has also been tried in some cases (Rew, et al. 1999). A community-university GIS partnership for weed mapping is reported recently from the Blackwood community of Victoria, Australia. This is primarily an action research to integrate weed map by local people with the GIS image (Baral, et al. 2004). However, even without meant to combine with GPS/GIS, the participatory weed mapping can be proved as a quick, authentic and costeffective method useful for precise weed management with multiple concerns of precision, sustainability,
livelihoods and policy.

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Fig: Means of Mobility of Weeds

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