WEED CONTROL BY SOLARIZATION AND MULCHING IN COWPEA DEVELOPMENT

Sebastião De Oliveira Maia Júnior,Gleica Maria Correia Martins,Jailma Ribeiro De Andrade,Claudiana Moura Dos Santos,Lennon Klédson Dos Santos Silva ,Lígia Sampaio Reis

doi:10.32404/rean.v7i3.3938

Sebastião De Oliveira Maia Júnior, Gleica Maria Correia Martins + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.32404/rean.v7i3.3938

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Abstract

Weeds are a serious threat to agriculture because they compete with crops, thereby interfering in production. As such, this study aimed to assess weed control using soil solarization and mulching on the growth and yield of cowpea. A completely randomized design was used, with eight treatments and four repetitions. The treatments consisted of a combination of two management practices, namely soil solarization (with and without) and three mulches (castor bean, rattlepod and spontaneous vegetation), as well as no mulching. Non-solarized soil and without mulch increased the number and dry weight of weeds, while the main stem length of the cowpea plants decreased. Mulching increased the pod length and number of seeds per pod regardless of solarization, as well as shoot dry weight and moisture content. By contrast, root dry weight increased in the absence of mulching, particularly in non-solarized soil. Soil solarization reduces weed infestation in cowpea crops, especially when associated with mulching.

Highlights

Weed infestation in crops is a major problem in agriculture and causes serious economic losses due to competition for natural resources such as light, water, space and nutrients (Tavares et al, 2013; Lima et al, 2016)
The cowpea in particular has a limited ability to compete with weeds, and depending on the interference caused by their interaction, yield losses can range from 67 to 76% (Salgado et al, 2007; Osipitan, 2017), making weed control a vital part of successful crop production (Pessôa et al, 2017)
All the cowpea traits studied were affected by the soil management treatments, except for number of leaves (NL) and NP (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Weed infestation in crops is a major problem in agriculture and causes serious economic losses due to competition for natural resources such as light, water, space and nutrients (Tavares et al, 2013; Lima et al, 2016). The cowpea in particular has a limited ability to compete with weeds, and depending on the interference caused by their interaction, yield losses can range from 67 to 76% (Salgado et al, 2007; Osipitan, 2017), making weed control a vital part of successful crop production (Pessôa et al, 2017). In this respect, different crop management strategies have been adopted to eliminate or control weed including soil solarization (Candido et al, 2011) and mulching (Monquero et al, 2009). Solarization is a preventive, non-chemical form of weed control that helps deplete reserves of dormant weed seeds in the soil by increasing its temperature (Khan et al, 2012; Ghosh and Dolai, 2014), as observed in peanut (Soumya et al, 2004) and lettuce crops (Candido et al, 2011). Khan et al (2012) observed in cauliflower cultivation that the solarization technique reduced fresh and dry biomass of weeds compared to control during two years of cultivation.

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