Author(s):

Amardeep Kour, Navjot Gupta and SK Brar

Abstract: Weed management is a major bottleneck in guava nurseries as the weeds hinder the healthy seedling production. No doubt the herbicide is easy and handy tool for weed management but the excessive use of herbicides have well documented environmental issues. Thus alternate weed management practices are the need of hour for better management of weeds in fruit nurseries. Study was conducted at Punjab Agricultural University, Regional Research Station, Bathinda during 2016 and 2017, to assess the efficacy of different weed management methods on weed control and growth of guava seedlings in nursery. The treatments were Pendemethlin@1.5 l/acre as pre emergence weedicide, paddy straw mulch, black polythene mulch, white polythene mulch, maintenance of weed free seedling through hand weeding. Plots with no weed control practices were kept as control so as to compare the efficacy of different treatments. The results revealed a significant effect of different treatments on grassy as well as broad-leaf weeds in the nursery. Black polythene mulch effectively controlled the weeds and improved seedling survival percentage (95.15%) compared to control recording minimum survival of seedlings (80.7 %).White polythene was poor performer (83.1%) as compared to other treatments due to the heavy weed growth under the mulch and low durability of these sheets resulting in tearing of polythene sheets. Pendemethlin as a pre emergence weedicide @1.5 l/ acre was also effective in reducing the weed incidence but resurgence of weeds resulted in significantly higher weed biomass compared to other treatments. Use of black polythene mulch resulted in low weed density (1.1 m²) compared to other treatments. The black polythene sheet mulch proved to be effective tool for management of weeds in guava nursery.

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