Abstract
BackgroundMulching and manual or mechanical hoeing are the backbone of weed control strategies in organic agriculture. So, two field experiments were established in the village of Kafer El-Khawazim, Talkha district, Dakahlia Governorate, Egypt, during the winter seasons of 2017 and 2018. The experiments were conducted to evaluate the efficiency of the safe weed control methods of mulching and manual hoeing in comparison with metribuzine herbicide on potato plants and associated weeds.ResultsThe results indicated that the treatment of black plastic mulch was the superior treatment in controlling broadleaved, grassy, and total weeds as compared to other treatments under study. Metribuzin herbicide came in the second rank in controlling broadleaved weeds. Concerning to grassy and total weeds, banana leaf and cheeseweed straw mulches follow the black plastic mulch ideal treatment. The results also revealed that the use of black plastic mulch and banana leaf mulch followed by cheeseweed straw mulch led to the highest significant increase in growth characteristics and tuber yield of potato plants. This in turn correlated with a significant increase in tuber contents of phosphorus, potassium, and carbohydrate percentage than unweeded control treatment.ConclusionBlack plastic mulch followed by banana leaf mulch and cheeseweed straw mulch were the ideal safe treatments in controlling total weeds. This in turn reflected on potato plants by scoring the maximum values of yield characters as compared to unweeded check.
Highlights
Mulching and manual or mechanical hoeing are the backbone of weed control strategies in organic agriculture
Materials and methods Two field experiments were carried out at Kafer El-Khawazim, Talkha district, Dakahlia Governorate, Egypt, during the winter seasons of 2017and 2018 to examine the effect of different straw mulches, black poly ethylene mulch, and metribuzin herbicide on weed, vegetative growth, yield of potato crop, and some physical chemical characters of tubers
Black plastic mulch achieved the highest weed depression expressed in the lowest dry matter of the mentioned
Summary
Mulching and manual or mechanical hoeing are the backbone of weed control strategies in organic agriculture. The experiments were conducted to evaluate the efficiency of the safe weed control methods of mulching and manual hoeing in comparison with metribuzine herbicide on potato plants and associated weeds. Weed competition had negative effects on potato crop expressed in reducing tuber yield by 32.7% (Bhullar et al 2015) and up to 86% as well as tuber quality. Weed infestation removes nutrients from the soil which reflects negatively on crop yield (Shehata et al 2017). Weeds compete with crop plants for nutrients, soil moisture, space, and light and serve as an alternative hosts for numerous insect pests and diseases. Manual weeding is a conventional practice and quite effective, but it is expensive, tedious, and time-consuming and may cause root injury (Khurana et al 1993)
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