Allelopathy in China
CHUIHUA KONG

Chinese Allelopathy Society, China Society of Plant Protection, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China
E-mail: kongch@mail.edu.cn
(Received in revised form: November 23, 2004)

    Key words: Allelopathy, Chinese Allelopathy Society, Chinese Allelopathy Conference.

    China is a large and old country with over 5000-years history and agriculture has been the main profession. Crop rotations and mixed/intercropping systems have been practiced since ancient time. Allelopathic phenomenon has been also recorded in ancient Chinese literature. Since 1970’s, Professor C.H. Chou and his co-workers have done remarkable research on allelopathy in agro-ecosystems in Taiwan province, while allelopathic research in other provinces started late.

    With the support of National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), since 1990’s allelopathy has been widely investigated in natural and managed ecosystems and substantial progress has been made. Research results demonstrated not only the existence of allelopathic phenomenon in various plant species in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, but also revealed the mechanisms of production, release, action, degradation and transformation of allelochemicals in plant species. Furthermore, allelopathic interactions between various plant species under our environmental conditions have been studied. Recently, allelopathic research has focused on the staple food crops of rice and wheat. The allelopathic accessions of rice and wheat from Chinese germplasm collections have been evaluated and screened. A new method to assess allelopathic crop accessions and individual plants in a non-destructive manner has been developed using specific allelochemicals as markers. Many allelochemicals from plants in natural and managed ecosystems have been isolated and identified. A few allelochemicals have been also modified and synthesized. Unfortunately, most of these studies have been published in Chinese, hence, rarely known to international world, therefore, allelopathy research in China could not make its potential impact.

    Currently, many Chinese groups are doing research on allelopathy, hence, more research has been published in several international journals. The 1st Chinese Allelopathy Conference was held in May 18-20, 2004. Prof. S. O. Duke (Natural Products Utilization Research Unit, USDA-ARS, USA), Prof. Y. Fujii (National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, Japan) and Prof. Y. Steinberger (Bar-Ilan University, Israel) delivered their keynote presentations in this conference. Chinese participants made 137 presentations and Chinese Allelopathy Society was established during the conference. Some full papers and abstracts from the 1st Chinese Allelopathy Conference are being published as Conference Proceedings in this Special Issue of Allelopathy Journal.

    Many scientists greatly helped in the preparation of this Special Issue. I am very grateful to Prof. Shamsher S. Narwal, Editor-in-Chief, Allelopathy Journal, for his enthusiastic support to my idea to prepare this Special Issue. The authors have prepared valuable manuscripts for this issue. The following scientists reviewed the manuscripts and corrected their English: Drs. Y. Fujii (National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, Japan), T. Haig (Charles Sturt University, Australia); and A. L. Bilgrami (Rutgers University, USA); Professors J. Qasem (University of Jordan, Jordan), P. C. Bhowmik (University of Massachusetts, USA); K. L. Kim (Kyungpook National University, Korea); Yongqing Ma (Northwest Sci-Tech University, China); Chaoxian Zhang (Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China) and Liuqing Yu (National Rice Research Institute, China).

    Authors and I wish to thank Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences for its financial support to the 1st Chinese Allelopathy Conference and this Special Issue.

    Finally, I hope that this Special Issue will stimulate more Chinese scientists to join this exciting research field and make our major achievements known worldwide.