Climate change and the globalization of the movement of people and goods have increased the risk of new weed species being introduced into Japan from overseas. As the domestic population declines and the number of agricultural workers decreases, controlling invasive alien weeds that have become widespread and are difficult to manage requires substantial labor and cost. Consequently, early intervention against invasive alien weeds has become a critical challenge for food security, as it is essential to protect agricultural production areas and stabilize crop production. At the same time, as calls intensify for environmentally sound weed management, there is a growing need - toward realizing sustainable agriculture and food systems as envisioned in the Green Food System Strategy - to develop physical and cultural weed management technologies that do not rely solely on chemical pesticides and that are preventive, labor‐saving, and low in environmental impact. Accordingly, within the department of weed control research, we are developing integrated control technologies for hard‐to‐control invasive weeds and verifying the effectiveness of weed risk reduction through crop rotation using both model‐based analyses and field‐level applications.
