Subrahmaniyan Kasirajan

TL;DR: The use of plastic mulch in agriculture has increased dramatically in the last 10 years throughout the world as mentioned in this paper, due to benefits such as increase in soil temperature, reduced weed pressure, moisture conservation, reduction of certain insect pests, higher crop yields, and more efficient use of soil nutrients.

TL;DR: The use of plastic mulch and drip irrigation in agriculture for weed control and microclimate modification has contributed significantly to increase in the yields of many vegetable crops (Brown et al. 1987; Csizinszky and Martin 1988; Diaz-Perez and Batal 2002; White 1988) as discussed by the authors.