Effect of tillage and weed management on weed biomass and productivity of summer maize (Zea mays)

A field experiment was conducted during the summer season of 2014 at Bhubaneswar, Odisha to study the effect of tillage and weed management on weed biomass and productivity of summer maize (Zea mays L.). The experiment comprised of 3 tillage methods, viz. conventional tillage, minimum tillage and zero tillage, and 6 different types of weed management practices, viz. atrazine 1.25 kg/ha pre-emergence, 2, 4-D 0.5 kg/ha (post-emergence), atrazine 1.25 kg/ha (pre-emergence) + 2, 4-D 0.5 kg/ha (post-emergence), atrazine @1.25 kg/ha (pre-emergence) + 1 hand-weeding 30 days after planting (DAP), hoeing and weeding at 15 and 30 DAP and weedy check, and was laid out in split-plot design with 3 replications. The 3 tillage methods were allocated to main plots and 6 weed management practices to subplots. ‘Nilesh’ was taken as test variety of maize. At harvesting, zero tillage recorded the minimum weed biomass and both minimum and conventional tillage exhibited significantly higher weed biomass than zero tillage. Among the weed-management practices, atrazine + 1 hand-weeding resulted in the minimum weed biomass at 15 DAP and harvesting, with the maximum weed-control efficiency of 84% at harvesting. The interaction effects of tillage and weed-management practices on yield of grain and stover were found significant. Atrazine + 1 hand-weeding under zero tillage proved the best with the maximum grain yield of 8.08 t/ha, stover yield of 10.10 t/ha, net return of 88.4 × 103 /ha.