Adverse Effects of Allelopathy from Legume Crops and Its Possible Avoidance

Abstract

Plant releases many bioactive chemicals from its various parts such as leaves, stem, root and sometimes decomposed body through different mechanism into its surrounding environment. These bioactive chemicals are often termed as allelochemicals because they interact with the surrounding environment. This interaction is either positive or negative. Effects of allelochemicals to the agricultural and biological ecosystem are well documented. In leguminosae family many species are involved in releasing of allelochemicals. Many researchers found that this allelochemicals have both positive and detrimental effects on the successive legume crops. Legume monoculture is common in many parts of the world where they cause a numbers of ecological and economic problems such as decline in crop yield due to soil sickness, regeneration failure and replant problem. These negative effects of allelochemicals open a great concern on allelopathy research. This article reviews the adverse effects of allelochemicals, their extraction and isolation, mechanism inside the plant body. These all are done to find out the possible selection methods of succeeding crops to avoid the allelopathic effects in the next crop of a monoculture farm field. The main purpose of this article is to highlight the adverse allelopathic effects of legume crops to provide ways for sustainable development in agro-ecosystem.