Department of Agronomy, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141 004, India.
A field experiment was conducted at the Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana in winter 1997–99 to study the control of Phalaris minor in relation to date of sowing, cultivar, planting pattern and weed control treatments. The 25th Oct. sown crop owing to its more dry matter production caused 26.9% reduction in dry matter accumulation by Phalaris and hence, resulted in 21.6% higher grain yield over 10th Nov. sown crop. No significant variation in grain yield was noticed in case of cultivars WH-542 and PBW-343. Narrow row spacing of 15 cm registered 15.5% reduction in dry matter production by Phalaris and thus gave 13.2% higher grain yield over normal spacing (22.5 cm). It was interesting that 25th Oct. sown crop maintained its superiority in suppressing P. minor even without the application of isoproturon compared with 10th Nov. sown crop with application of isoproturon at 0.94 kg ha−1. This study further envisaged that 25th Oct. sown crop produced more grain yield in closer spacing of 15 cm without isoproturon (0.94 kg ha−1) application than normal spacing of 22.5 cm in combination with isoproturon (0.94 kg ha−1) application, however, grain yield was statistically same in 10th Nov. sown crop under the same set of treatments.
