Laser Weeding Technology: A Precision Approach for Sustainable Weed Management in Vegetable Crops

Synthetic herbicides were first commercialized in the 1940’s and rapidly adopted in agriculture because of their high effectiveness. By 1988, the chemical weed control toolbox had expanded to over 30 sites of action (Heap 2025). The introduction of herbicide‐resistant agronomic crops in the late 1990s simplified weed control and increased reliance on a few broad‐spectrum herbicides across millions of hectares. Many growers still rely on transgenic crops as the foundation of their weed management programs with herbicide‐resistant crops grown on 167 million hectares worldwide in 2019.