Influence of Weeding on the Performance of White Maize Varieties

Abstract

The experiment was conducted at agronomy farm of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka from November 2017 to April 2018 to investigate the influence of weeding regimes on the performance of white maize varieties. The experiment comprised two varieties viz . YANGNUO-3000 and PSC-121, designated as V 1 and V 2 respectively combined with four weed control treatments viz. T 0 = No weeding, T 1 = One hand weeding at 60 DAS (days after sowing), T 2 = two hand weeding at 40 DAS and 60 DAS and T 3 = Weed free after 40 DAS. The experiment was laid out in RCBD (factorial) with three replications. PSC-121 showed the superior performance in terms of plant height, leaf number plant -1 , number of grains cob -1 (468.75), 100 grains weight (35.0837 g), grain yield (8.28 t ha -1 ), stover yield (6.56 t ha -1 ) and harvest index (55.58%) over YANGNUO-3000. In the case of weed control treatments, the highest plant height, leaf number plant -1 , number of grains cob -1 (464.54), 100 grains weight (37 g), grain yield (9.25 t ha -1 ) and stover yield (7.46 t ha -1 ) were reported from T 3 . All the parameters studied were found lowest with T 0 . However, in terms of interaction, no single interaction was superior to other alternatives. But in most of the cases V 2 T 3 showed the highest values regarding the maximum plant height, leaf number plant -1 , number of grains cob -1 (494.97) and 100 grains weight (38 g). V 2 T 3 showed the highest grain yield (9.33 t ha -1 ), whereas, V 1 T 0 showed the lowest grain yield (5.49 t ha -1 ). The lowest weed density and weed biomass (12.17 no. m -2 and 4.33 g·m -2 ) was recorded from T 3 . The highest weed control efficiency (94.38%) was also recorded from T 3 . In the case of variety V 2 showed better performance in terms of weed density, weed biomass and WCE (46.32%).