Weed science is a scientific discipline concerned with plants that may be considered weeds, their effects on human activities, and their management "a branch of applied ecology that attempts to modify the environment against natural evolutionary trends.".
History
Weeds have existed since humans began settled agriculture have existed since the advent of settled agriculture around 10,000 years ago it has been suggested that the most common characteristic of the ancestors of our presently dominant crop plants is their willingness—their tendency to be successful, to thrive, in disturbed habitats, mostly those around human dwellings. Farmers have likely always been aware of weeds in their crops, although the evidence for their awareness and concern is nearly all anecdotal.
Unlike other agricultural sciences like entomology or plant pathology, the emergence of weed science is comparatively recent, occurring largely within the 20th century and coinciding with the development of herbicides.
Weeds are controlled in much of the world by hand (roguing) or with crude hoes. The size of a farmer's holding and yield per unit area are limited by several things and paramount among them is the rapidity with which a family can weed its crops. More human labor may be expended to weed crops than on any other single human enterprise, and most of that labor is expended by women. Weed control in the Western world and other developed areas of the world is done by sophisticated machines and by substituting chemical energy (herbicides) for mechanical and human energy. There is a relationship between the way farmers control weeds and the ability of a nation to feed its people. Successful weed management is one of the essential ingredients to maintain and increase food production.
In 1923, Clark and Fletcher suggested that the "annual losses due to the occurrence of pernicious weeds on farm land in Canada, although acknowledged in a general way, are far greater than is realized." They thought this was because "farmers gave little critical attention to the weeds growing among their crops." They did not deny that farmers were aware of the weeds only that they could do little about them. Many of the same weeds described by Clark and Fletcher are shown in most current weed identification books. In spite of continued research to mitigate weeds annually many of the same species continue to be problematic. The first U.S. Congressional appropriation for weed control was made in 1901 for work on control of johnsongrass, 23 years after Congress had appropriated funds for work on cotton insect pests. Petroleum-based herbicides were first used on California crop land in 1924 and soon became widely accepted in Southwestern states. In 1942, oils were used extensively for weed control in carrots and subsequently were used in forest nurseries. French scientists sprayed apple trees with dinitro dyes to control mosses, algae, and lichens. Some noticed that grasses that were wet from the spray did not die and that observation, or, more likely, a series of observations, led to the use of dinitros as herbicides for selective control of broadleaved weeds in cereals and flax. Sinox (sodium dinitro cresylate) was developed by Pastac in 1933. It was the first selective organic herbicide introduced in the US. From the early 1930s until about 1945, it was used extensively in grains, clover hay, grass seed crops, peas, cane berries, onions, and lawns.
Timmons, writing in 1970 reported that "available literature indicates that relatively few agricultural leaders and farmers became interested in weeds as a problem before 1200 A.D. or even before 1500 A.D." The “critical attention” Clark and Fletcher thought was absent increased slowly, primarily because the general attitude seemed to be that “weeds were a curse which must be endured, and about which little could be done except by methods which were incidental to crop production, and by laborious supplemental hand methods."
Jethro Tull, in 1731, appealed for greater attention to weeds: It is needless to go about to compute the value of the damage weeds do, since all experienced husbandmen know it to be very great, and would unanimously agree to extirpate their whole race as entirely as in England they have done the wolves, though much more innocent and less rapacious than weeds.
Farmers however were bound by their inability to do much about weeds except by laborious hand methods.