Weed management and rapeseed mustard productivity in conservation agriculture based rice-yellow mustard-greengram cropping system in lateritic belt of West Bengal

A field experiment was conducted during 2015–16 and 2016–17 at Agriculture Farm, Institute of Agriculture, Visva-Bharati, Sriniketan, West Bengal to study the effect of tillage and weed management practices on weed growth and productivity of yellow mustard in direct-seeded rice-yellow mustard-greengram cropping system. The experiment was laid out in a strip plot design with four horizontal tillage strips and three vertical weed management strips replicated thrice. Results revealed that conservational tillage (zero tillage + residue) along with recommended herbicide (RH) (pendimethalin at 0.75 kg/ha) + one hand weeding (HW) recorded the lower values of total weed density (6.20 and 6.43 no/m²) and dry weight (1.22 and 1.42 g/m²) and higher values of seed yield (1.20 and 1.46 t/ha) in first and second year, respectively. In second year, conservational tillage even with RH alone registered at par values of total weed density and dry weight with conventional tillage + RH + 1 HW and it also recorded 10.2% higher seed yield than conventional tillage + RH + 1 HW. Thus, conservation tillage along with recommended herbicide alone in yellow mustard appeared to be a promising technique with respect to weed suppression and productivity of yellow mustard in conservation agriculture based rice-mustard sarson-greengram cropping system.