Weed management in maize

A field experiment was conducted on sandy loam soil of Birsa Agricultural University, Ranchi during rainy season of 2014 to evaluate the performance of weed-control methods on weed dynamics and productivity of maize. The experiment was laid out in randomized block design with 12 treatment in three replication. Application of atrazine + pendimethalin 0.50 + 0.50 kg/ha as pre-emergence similar to two hand weeding at 20 and 40 DAS recorded reduced weed density dry matter accumulation compared to weedy check at 30 and 60 days after sowing. These resulted significantly increase in plant height, number of grains per cob, 100-seed weight as well as 65.6% significantly higher grain yield (3.80 t/ha) as compared to weedy check (1.309 t/ha), consequently maximum net return ( 53492/ha) and benefit: cost ratio (3.57) than rest of the treatments.