Effect of different cultural and chemical weed management practices on weeds and wheat

Field experiments were conducted to study the effect of weed management practices on weeds and yield of wheat during 2005-06. Weeds like Avena fatua, Chenopodium album, Cynodon dactyl on, Melilotus indica and Phalaris minor, dominated the field. Weed management treatments were stale seed bed preparation, early sowing, higher seed rate, close row spacing, hand weeding (cultural treatments), fenoxaprop-p-ethyl (90g a.i./ha), metribuzin (70g a.i./ha), metsulfuron methyl (4.0g a.i./ha), weed free and weedy control with three replications. In cultural treatments higher seed rate of 125kg/ha and close row spacing of 15cm provided higher grain yield 4022 and 3989kg/ha respectively as compared to stale seed bed and early sowing treatments. In chemical treatments Fenoxaprop-p-ethyl at 90g a.i./ha provided excellent control of weeds and increased the grain yield (4988kg/ha) as compared to metribuzin (4589kg/ha) and metsulfuron methyl (4495kg/ha) treatments. All the weed management treatments reduced the weed population, weed dry weight and increased the plant height, number of tillers/plant, number of grains/ear, 1000grain weight and grain yield of wheat over the weedy control.