**9. Conclusions**

Cucumber is a difficult crop to manage as it is susceptible to the attack of numerous weeds, disease pathogens, and insect pests. Weeds reduces cucumber yield and deteriorate fruit quality. Unfortunately, cucumber is not a strong competitor against weeds particularly during the early growth stage. Hence, it is necessary to control weeds to obtain increased yield and high quality fruit from cucumber. All the weed control methods have their own shortcomings and cannot be used as a stand-alone tactics to manage weeds in cucumber efficiently. Manual weed have the constraint of high cost and labor shortage, mechanical options have their own limitations because of the increase in fuel cost, and their use is not practicable within cucumber rows and on large farm sizes. Chemical control on the other hand are always expressive, and only a few herbicides are registered for weed control in cucumber. Moreover, the few available herbicides cannot control the entire weed spectrum and provide season-long weed control when used alone. No single weed control method can provide 100% control; therefore, there is a need to adopt an integrated weed management approach to control weeds in cucumber. A good tillage operation and land preparation, the use of a competitive cucumber cultivar and appropriate plant population and row spacing, application of pre-emergence herbicides, application of post-emergence herbicides particularly along crop rows with the use of spray guard are important in reducing weed density. The combination of these approaches provides effective weed control, improves fruit quality, and helps in environmental conservation. The world is now moving toward precision weed management techniques which involve remote sensing, modelling and use of robotics to control weeds. These technologies are the future of weed management in crop production and have a substantial role to play in modern cucumber production systems. Right selection of one or more of these techniques with reference to environmental, socioeconomic, and geographic conditions will provide effective weed control in cucumber.
