Global occurrences of herbicide resistant weed populations have increased the demand for development of new herbicides targeting novel mechanisms of action. Metagenomic approaches to natural drug discovery offer potential for isolating weed suppressive compounds from microorganisms. In past research, traditional techniques entailed isolating compounds from living organisms, whereas metagenomic approaches involve extracting fragments of DNA from soil and exploring for compounds of interest produced by the transformed hosts. Several herbicidal compounds have been isolated from soil bacteria through culturing methods and have led to the development of popular herbicides, such as glufosinate. In this review, we discuss the emergence of metagenomic approaches for weed management in the context of natural product discovery using traditional culture-dependent isolation and the more recent culture-independent methods. The same techniques can be used to isolate herbicide resistance genes. Adoption of metagenomic approaches in pest management research can lead to novel control strategies in cropping and landscape systems.

Nomenclature: Glufosinate; bialaphos.