Productivity and economics of rainy season groundnut as influenced by weed management practices

Field experiment was conducted on medium black calcareous clayey soil at Junagadh Agricultural University, Junagadh during two consecutive seasons of 2013 and 2014 to study the influence of different weed management practices on productivity and economics of Kharif groundnut (cv. GG-20).Higher weed control efficiency (82.6%), herbicide efficiency index (74.1%), lower weed index (5.1%) and lesser monocot weed density were recorded with pendimethalin 0.9 kg/ha pre-emergence application (PE) followed by (fb) intercultivation (IC) and hand weeding (HW) at 40–45 days after seeding (DAS). Weed density of most dominated sedge weed species at 30 DAS, 60 DAS and at harvest were significantly lowered with application of pendimethalin 0.9 kg/ha PE fb imazethapyr 75 g/ha as postemergence application (POE) at 25–30 DAS compared to other herbicides, which were 92.7, 93.5 and 93.0% less over the unweeded control, respectively. The same treatment also recorded the lowest weed dry biomass at harvest. Besides weed free, significantly the higher pod yield (1.75 t/ha) and net return (‘40,657/ha) and B: C ratio (2.38) were recorded with application of pendimethalin 0.9 kg/ha PE fb IC and HW at 40–45 DAS. No phytotoxicity symptoms has been observed with any of the herbicides applied to Kharif groundnut.