Background: Weed management continues to be a significant challenge in agriculture due to extreme use of chemicals which have adverse effects on environment and human health. Objective: This study investigates the potential of magnetic fields as an innovative and effective technique for weed control, aiming to determine their efficacy in modulating weed germination characteristics. Methods: It was evaluated the impact of a static electromagnetic field on the germination behavior of two weed species—Chenopodium album and Echinochloa crus-galli—under both laboratory and field conditions. Key parameters measured included germination percentage, germination rate, and average germination time, with variations in magnetic field intensity and exposure duration systematically assessed. Additionally, regression analysis was conducted, yielding mathematical models with coefficients of determination between 0.86 and 0.98, and a multi-objective genetic algorithm was employed to optimize the treatment parameters. Results: Optimal magnetic treatment conditions were identified as 10 minutes at 25 mT for Chenopodium album and 7.22 minutes at 22.46 mT for Echinochloa crus-galli. The results showed that magnetic treatment increased the germination percentage by up to 14% in Echinochloa crus-galli and 21% in Chenopodium album, respectively. Although the laboratory experiments yielded robust predictive models, the outcomes observed under field conditions did not fully replicate the laboratory results, indicating a potential divergence in treatment efficacy between controlled and real-world environments. Conclusions: The findings underscore the need for species-specific and tailored magnetic treatment parameters in weed management. The promising laboratory results coupled with the partial validation in field conditions provide a foundation for further research into sustainable alternatives to conventional herbicides.

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