Assessment of nutrient removal by weeds and grain yield of transgenic maize and its counterpart hybrids under herbicidal weed control programmes

Abstract

Field studies were conducted during kharif 2009 and rabi 2009-10 at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore to assess the nutrient removal by weeds and uptake by transgenic stacked maize hybrids and its counter parts under various weed control programmes. Treatments consisted of two transgenic hybrids named Hishell and 900 M Gold applied with glyphosate as early post emergence application (POE) at 900, 1800 and 3600 g a.e ha-1 compared with its counterpart hybrids applied with pre-emergence (PE) atrazine at 0.5 kg ha-1 followed by one hand weeding (HW) on 40 DAS. Among the treatments, maximum nutrient uptake by maize, higher grain yield and lower nutrient removal by weeds with glyphosate at 1800 g a.e ha-1 in transgenic 900 M Gold and glyphosate at 3600 g a.e ha-1 in transgenic Hishell were recorded during kharif and rabi, respectively.