Glyphosate – How it Became a Once in a Hundred Year Herbicide and its Future
Outlooks on Pest Management | By Duke et al.
More than a decade ago we termed glyphosate a “once in a century herbicide” (Duke & Powles, 2008). We designated glyphosate with this distinction in 2008 even though we were only 60 years into the age of synthetic herbicides. As synthetic herbicide use began about 1945, we are fast approaching the 75th year of the herbicide era. Also, it is nearly 50 years since first use of glyphosate. Glyphosate has been by far the world’s most used herbicide for about two decades, and it currently makes substantial contributions to world food production. The history of how this molecule attained such importance and our views on the growing biological challenges (herbicide resistance evolution) to its future use in feeding a growing world population are discussed.