Evaluation of Different Mechanical Weed Control Methods in Rice Field

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted to evaluate different mechanical weed control methods in rice field by using three types of mechanical rice weeders i.e., single row cono weeder (T2), single row mandwa weeder (T3) and two row power weeder (T4) were compared with hand weeding (T1). The results revealed that among the mechanical weeders, the highest weeding efficiency (88.62%) was obtained with T4 and the lowest value (78.67%) with T2. The average of damaged plants in mechanical weeders was obtained as 3.78, 2.83 and 1.76 per cent, in T4, T2 and T3 treatments, respectively as compared to 0.11 per cent in hand weeding. The highest effective field capacity of 0.064 ha/h was measured with T4 and the corresponding lowest values of 0.017 and 0.012 ha/h were obtained with T3 and T2, respectively. The weeding cost was reduced by 34.9, 53.9 and 49.65 per cent in T2, T3 and T4, respectively as compared to T1. Among the four treatments, highest grain yield of 43.6 q/ha was recorded in T4 followed by 37.5q/ha, 36.75q/ha and 34.04 q/ha in treatments T3, T2 and T1,respectively. Among the tested weeders T4 showed a proper field performance.