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.