Tillage and weed management effects on yield performance of chickpea (Cicer arietinum) grown after sorghum (Sorghum bicolor)

A field experiment was conducted at research farm of Rani Lakshmi Bai Central Agricultural University, Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh during rabi’2019–20 to find out the effect of three tillage practices viz. zero tillage (ZT), zero tillage with residue (ZT+R), conventional tillage (CT), and weed management practices viz. pre-emergence (PE) pendimethalin, pendimethalin PE fb post-emergence (PoE) application of clodinafop-propargyl + Na-acifluorfen, pendimethalin PE fb hand weeding (HW) and unweeded check on yield performance of chickpea grown after sorghum. The experiment was laid out in a split-plot design, with tillage in main plots and weed management practices in sub plots. The crop biomass, primary and secondary branches, no. of root nodules, nodule dry weight, no. of pods/plant were significantly higher under ZT+R compared to CT. Among the weed management practices, pendimethalin PE fb clodinafop-propargyl + Na-acifluorfen PoE performed significantly better than other weed management practices.The grain yield under ZT+R was 11.0 and 21.1% over the ZT and CT, while the PE application of pendimethalin fb PoE application of clodinafop-propargyl + Na-acifluorfen provided complete control of weeds and resulted in 8.6 and 19.4% higher grain yield of chickpea than pendimethalin PE fb hand weeding and pendimethalin alone, respectively.