Delivering the barebones for designing more weed suppressive crop rotations

Even though crop rotation is often regarded as an important component of weed management, tools for optimising the weed-suppressive character of crop rotations are lacking. The long-term character of this strategy and the variety of weed-promoting and weed-suppressing conditions and events that are involved, complicate this matter. For this reason, a modelling framework was developed to help identify the main determinants of the effectiveness of crop rotations from a weed management perspective. It is this framework that should ultimately provide the basis for cropping systems optimisation, involving aspects like the length of the rotation cycle and the number and order of crops in the crop rotation. At the same time, such a framework creates the foundation for assessing the benefits of more weed-suppressive rotations which could then be weighed against potential detriments for other ecosystem services. Typically, such an overarching systems approach is required for making crop rotations fit for the future.