Vol. 11, Issue 4 (2022)

Author(s):
Maske Ganesh, Pandey BR, Kewat ML and Sahu Ankita

Abstract:
The onion (Allium cepa L.) is a short-lived, shallow-rooted vegetable crop found throughout India, and it is more susceptible to weed infestation. Weed is creating havoc all over the world. It is a silent killer of crops. Productivity goes down, making farmers baffled. Weeds pose a serious problem in the successful cultivation of onions. Hand weeding is time-consuming, costly, and labor-intensive. This situation makes it necessary to use herbicides for effective and timely control of weeds in this crop. It is thus highly imperative to schedule a suitable method of weed control by the application of different herbicides to enhance profit for the onion growers in the country. With this background, an experiment was conducted at the research farm, Maharajpur, college of agriculture, Jawaharlal Nehru Agriculture University, Jabalpur (MP) in 2019–20. The experiment was carried out in a split plot design (SPT) with different weed management practices like Pendimethalin 1.0 kg/ha (PE), Oxyfluorfen 250 g/ha (POE), Propaquizafop 100 g/ha (POE), two-hand weeding at 20 and 40 DAT, and control (weedy check). The results of the experiment showed that the weed control practices had significantly affected all the studied parameters. The lowest weed density, weed dry weight, and weed index were found in hand weeding at 20 and 40 DAT (9.65 m-2, 5.57 g-2,and 7.01%, respectively) and high weed control efficiency (70.40%), closely followed by post-emergence application of Oxyfluorfen as compared to other weed control practices like Pendimethalin and Propaquizafop. The maximum average weight of bulb, bulb yield /plot, marketable bulb yield recorded in the hand weeding at 20 and 40 DAT (42.45 g, 15.15 kg and 24.58 t/ha, respectively) with at par Oxyfluorfen 250 g/ha (42.25 g, 14.44 kg, and 23.76 t/ha, respectively) but manual weeding are more laborious, costly and time taking practices due to Oxyfluorfen 250 g/ha noted highest net monetary return and B:C ratio (3,19,729.85 Rs/ha and 3.05).