Meeting the Local Rice Needs in Nigeria through Effective Weed Management

Nigeria is blessed with natural and human resources required to produce rice to meet its local consumption. These resources are spread across all the agro-ecological zones of the country. Despite the availability of these resources, rice production in Nigeria could still not meet the local consumption and over 40% of the crop is imported annually to complement the local production. Several studies have revealed biotic and abiotic stresses as the major impediment to the production of the crop. Weeds are the most prominent of all the stresses across all the ecologies in term of yield reduction, labour demand and control cost. Yield losses of 35-75% and 70-100% have been recorded in low land and upland ecologies respectively as a result of weed interference. The problem of weed is worse than any of the other stress mentioned above except for water stress in low land ecology. This paper reviews the various weed management options that could be adopted for optimal rice yield, by the resource poor farmers of Nigeria.