Integrated Weed Management Effect on Weeds and Seed Cotton Yield

Integrated weed management is a system approach where by whole land use planning is done in advance to minimise the very invasion of weeds in aggressive forms and give crop plants a strongly competitive advantage over the weeds. Further, importance is given to involve more than one method of weed control in tackling the weeds so those broad spectrums of weeds are kept under check for longer period. A pre emergence herbicide take care of weeds only for a limited period and do not give long term weed control in a long duration crop like cotton where the problem of late emerging weeds arises and escape killing. So to attain a season long weed control, integration of chemical, mechanical and cultural methods holds a great promise in crop production. Hence, integrated weed management in cotton play important role in increasing crop production. Field experiments were conducted during 2013 and 2014, at Agricultural College and Research Institute, Madurai (Tamil Nadu Agricultural University) to study the effect of integrated weed management in rainfed cotton. The weed management practices consisted of pendimethalin (1.0 kg.ha-1) and (Calotropisgigantea leaf extract spray at three concentrations (10%, 20%, and 30%) in combination with power weeder operation twice and manual weeding twice. From the results of the experiments, it could be recommended that the integrated weed management practices like, application of PE pendimethalin at 1.0 kg ha-1 + power weeding on 40 DAS (T11) recorded higher seed cotton yield and economic return.