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Background: Using cover crops in organic vineyards can provide many advantages, including weed suppression. However, their effectiveness may depend on the weed community, the cover crop species and the termination method. The most common practice for cover crop termination is shredding, but rapid residue decomposition can allow noxious species like Cynodon dactylon to proliferate during summer and compete with the vines. The use of roller-crimpers as an alternative method can be effective in some cropping systems, but no studies have focused on their use in the inter-row of vineyards. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of seven cover crops (spontaneous, Avena strigosa, Hordeum vulgare, Lolium multiflorum, Phacelia tanacetifolia, Sinapis alba and X Triticosecale) and two termination methods (shredding or roller-crimper) in managing C. dactylon during summer., Results: In 2020, rolled A. strigosa, P. tanacetifolia and the spontaneous flora limited the coverage of C. dactylon more than shredding (increases of 3% and 18% in C. dactylon cover from July to September in rolled and shredded cover crops, respectively), while in 2021, rolling was better than shredding for all cover crop species in September (5% and 18% increases, respectively)., Conclusion: Roller-crimping cover crops was an effective method to control C. dactylon in vineyard inter-rows but it did not consistently work for all cover crops in both years. Our study is one of the first to test the efficacy of roller-crimpers to manage summer weeds in vineyards. © 2023 The Authors. Pest Management Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry., (© 2023 The Authors. Pest Management Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.)

Weed management is a critically important activity on both agricultural and non-agricultural lands, but it is faced with a daunting set of challenges: environmental damage caused by control practices, weed resistance to herbicides, accelerated rates of weed dispersal through global trade, and greater weed impacts due to changes in climate and land use. Broad-scale use of new approaches is needed if weed management is to be successful in the coming era. We examine three approaches likely to prove useful for addressing current and future challenges from weeds: diversifying weed management strategies with multiple complementary tactics, developing crop genotypes for enhanced weed suppression, and tailoring management strategies to better accommodate variability in weed spatial distributions. In all three cases, proof-of-concept has long been demonstrated and considerable scientific innovations have been made, but uptake by farmers and land managers has been extremely limited. Impediments to employing these and other ecologically based approaches include inadequate or inappropriate government policy instruments, a lack of market mechanisms, and a paucity of social infrastructure with which to influence learning, decision-making, and actions by farmers and land managers. We offer examples of how these impediments are being addressed in different parts of the world, but note that there is no clear formula for determining which sets of policies, market mechanisms, and educational activities will be effective in various locations. Implementing new approaches for weed management will require multidisciplinary teams comprised of scientists, engineers, economists, sociologists, educators, farmers, land managers, industry personnel, policy makers, and others willing to focus on weeds within whole farming systems and land management units., (© 2016 by the Ecological Society of America.)