Management of diverse weed flora of wheat by herbicide combinations

A field experiment was conducted at College of Agriculture, Gwalior, India during Rabi (winter) seasons of 2014–15 and 2015–16 to evaluate the bio-efficacy of different herbicides to control diverse weed flora especially Phalaris minor in wheat. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design, replicated three times, and consisted of 12 treatments including four treatment as pendimethalin (0.75 kg/ha) as pre-emergence (PE); sulfosulfuron (0.025 kg/ha), metribuzin (0.21 kg/ha), clodinafop (0.06 kg/ha) as post-emergence (PoE) used individually and six of different herbicidal combinations as pendimethalin + metribuzin (1.0 + 0.175 kg/ha PE), pendimethalin + sulfosulfuron (1.0 + 0.018 kg/ha PE and PoE), sulfosulfuron + metsulfuron (0.03 + 0.002 kg/ha at 5 WAS), pinoxaden + metsulfuron (0.06 + 0.004 kg/ha at 5 WAS), mesosulfuron + iodosulfuron(0.012 + 0.0024 kg/ha at 5 WAS), clodinafop + metsulfuron (0.06 + 0.004 kg/ha at 5 WAS), weedy check and as two hand weedings at 30 and 60 DAS. The highest mortality of weeds and the maximum grain yield of 5.00 t/ha and 4.07 t/ha with 38.2%, 31.0% increase in grain yield over weedy check were recorded with two hand weedings at 30 and 60 DAS (weed free) followed by herbicidal combination as pinoxaden + metsulfuron (0.06 + 0.004 kg/ha at 5 WAS) as PoE application during 2014–15 and 2015–16, respectively Whereas, the highest B:C ratio of (3.69) was obtained with pinoxaden + metsulfuron (pre-mix) followed by sulfosulfuron + metsulfuron (3.67).