Efficacy of Post Emergence Herbicides in Groundnut

Abstract

Background: Groundnut encounters severe infestation of weed especially during the early stages of growth due to less crop canopy which allows higher weeds growth and thus crop becomes more susceptible to weed competition. During rainy season, effective and economical weed control is not possible through manual and mechanical weeding due to unfavorable soil conditions and also the unavailability of costly labours. Herbicides have been accepted as cost effective tool to manage weed menace in groundnut. The current study aims to study the efficancy of different post-emergence and pre-mix combination of post-emergence herbicides on weeds, growth and yield of groundnut. Methods: The field experiment was conducted at AICRP Weed Management field, Department of Agronomy, Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth, Akola (M.S.) during three consecutive Kharif seasons of 2015- 2017. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design with ten treatments replicated thrice. The treatments comprised of one pre emergence and five different post emergence herbicides and compared with weed free and weedy check. Result: The results revealed that weed free was found most effective to control weeds in groundnut with lowest weed count, weed dry matter of weeds and maximum gross monetary returns (Rs.117641/ha), net monetary returns (Rs.80894/ha). Among the herbicides, application of Imazethapyr + Imazomox 0.10 kg /ha POE 20 DAS produced less weed count and weed dry matter and highest weed control efficiency (80.68%) and lower weed index (6.71% ) as well as maximum growth, yield attributes and pod yield in groundnut over all the other herbicidal treatments viz. plant height (30.25), dry matter accumulation (18.11g), number of pods/plant (32.35) and pod yield (2448 kg/ha) and highest pooled B:C ratio (3.74).