Interaction between Nutrition and Herbicide Application in Pea Culture

Abstract

The aim of our pot experiment was to study how pea plants respond to herbicide application with different nutrient supplies. We studied the effect of herbicides on growth parameters and examined the interaction between levels of nitrogen (N) fertilizers and the effect of herbicides. The experiment was conducted in a glasshouse with five different herbicides at three N levels. The N was added as nitrate the following levels: N0 = 0 mg kg−1 soil, N60 = 60 mg kg−1 soil, and N160 = 160 mg kg−1 soil. Four of the herbicides can be used as pre‐emergence treatments and one as postemergence treatment. Pre‐emergence applications of Afalon Dispersion (a.i. linuron), Command 48 EC (a.i. clomazone), Pledge 50 WP (a.i. flumioxazin), and Sencor 70 WG (a.i. metribuzin) were given, while Basagran (a.i. bentazone) was applied postemergence. Among them, the Pledge 50 WP is not permitted in pea culture in Hungary. In the four‐replication experiment, we used 132 pots. The plants were grown for 12 weeks, when the dry weight of shoots and pods and their N, phosphorous (P), and potassium (K) contents, were determined. Results show that the herbicide treatments decreased the weight of vegetative parts and the yield of the pea plants differently. The increasing doses of N fertilizer did not significantly increase the biomass of vegetative plant parts in all cases. The phytotoxic effect of the herbicides was sometimes stronger than the biomass, increasing the effect of N. For the biomass production of pea plants, the 160 mg kg−1 N dose was most favorable, with 22% increasing in vegetative production. The dry matter of shoots and pods decreased most in the case of N160 levels affected by herbicides. The linuron caused the most severe dry‐matter decrease; this was statistically verified at all N levels.