Eco-friendly weed management in organic rice (Oryza sativa L.) production

Abstract

A Field experiment was conducted at wetlands farm of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore during rabi 2014-15 (October-February) to study the best weed management practices in organic rice production. The experiment was laid out in randomized block design with three replication and ten treatments. The study revealed that the application of rice bran @ 2 t ha-1 on 3 DAT followed by hand weeding on 35 DAT reduced the total weed density (17.00 No.m-2) and total weed dry weight (3.87 g m-2) significantly under organic rice production. Higher grain (5557 kg ha-1) and straw yield (7207 kg ha-1) of rice were obtained by mulching using biodegradable polyethelene sheets due to its suppressive effect on weeds but cost.All the treatments gave significantly higher grain yield than unweeded check. Taking in to consideration of economics, hand weeding on 15 DAT followed by Azolla inoculation on the same daywas remunerative in organic rice as it given the highernet returns (`74,551 ha-1) and benefit: cost ratio (2.24).