Weed management in autumn planted sugarcane – chickpea intercropping system

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to study the ‘’Weed management in autumn planted sugarcane – chickpea intercropping system” at Main Sugarcane Research Station, Junagadh Agricultural University, Kodinar, Gujarat during 2015-2018. The treatments comprised of 3 levels of cropping system as a main plot i.e. I1-Sole sugarcane, I2-Sugarcane + chickpea (1:1) and I3-Sugarcane + chickpea (1:2) and 4 levels of weed control treatments i.e. W1-Unweeded control, W2-Hand weeding at 30 and 60 DAS of intercrop, W3- Pendimethalin 30 EC @ 1.00 kg a.i./ha as PE +1 HW at 45 DAS of intercrop and W4- Oxyfluorfen 23.5 EC @ 0.3 kg a.i./ha as PE + 1 HW at 45 DAS of intercrop. The result showed that sugarcane intercropped with chickpea (1:1 row ratio) gave higher cane equivalent yield (141.43 t/ha) and net returns than sugarcane inter cropped with chickpea (1:2 row ratio) as well as sole sugarcane. While considering the weed control treatments, pre emergence application of pendimethalin 30 EC @ 1.00 kg a.i./ha + 1 hand weeding at 45 DAS of inter crop gave significantly higher cane yield (144.28 t/ha), NMC (107.38 00/ha), CCS (14.57 t/ha) and cane equivalent yield followed by two hand weeding at 30 and 60 DAS of intercrop. The quality parameters of sugarcane like brix, sucrose, purity, CCS% and Extraction % did not undergo significant changes. Sugarcane.