Vol. 10, Issue 11 (2021)

Author(s):
Jinal Patel, Masaye SS, Gaikwad SS and Thakriya HR

Abstract:
The present experiment was conducted during winter 2019-20 at Polytechnic in Horticulture, ACHF, NAU, Paria (Gujarat). Soil properties and weed biomass were studied under different mulches and compared with control. The experiment was laid out as Randomized Block Design (RBD) with nine treatments and three replications. The result indicated that the maximum soil temperature at morning (26.8 °C, 25.6 °C, 26.7 °C, 23.7 °C, 25.6 °C, 26.2 °C and 26.8 °C), afternoon (34.9 °C, 34.4 °C , 30.5 °C, 30.7 °C, 32.00 °C, 36.4 °C and 36.8 °C) and evening (32.7 °C, 32.8 °C, 27.9 °C, 27.7 °C, 31.7 °C, 33.4 °C and 33.9 °C) at 14, 28, 42, 56, 70, 84 and 98 DATP, respectively, soil moisture content at 10, 20, 30 DATP and at first harvest (22.60, 20.97, 22.25 and 21.58 %, respectively) and minimum weed biomass at 20, 40 DATP and at first harvest (5.25, 6.49 and 7.20 g m^-2, respectively) were recorded with black polyethylene mulch (50 μm), among all the treatments. This indicated that the black polyethylene mulch (50 μm) had a positive effect on soil properties and weed biomass in broccoli var. Pusa KTS 1.