Performance of sequential herbicides to control weeds in direct seeded rice

Direct seeded rice is an emerging production technology in India due to less requirement of water, labour and capital input initially. But direct seeded rice face severe infestation of weeds. A field experiment was conducted during the kharif 2012 at Students’ Farm of College of Agriculture, CCS Haryana Agricultural University; Kaul campus (Kaithal) to study the performance of sequential application of herbicides on weed flora in direct seeded rice. The herbicidal treatments included two pre emergence herbicides i.e. pendimethalin 1000 g/ha and oxadiargyl 100 g/ ha and four post emergence herbicides (bispyribac sodium 25 g/ha, fenoxaprop 67 g/ha, ethoxysulfuron 18.75 g/ha and metsulfuron methyl 10% + chlorimuron ethyl 10% WP ready mix (Almix) 4 g/ha). Weed free and weedy check were also included. The results showed that grasses were the dominant weed flora (49 %) followed by sedges (34%) and broad leaf weeds (17%).Sequential application of pendimethalin 1000 g/ha fb bispyribac sodium 25 g/ha and metsulfuron methyl + chlorimuron ethyl RM (Almix) 4 g/ha gave significantly lower weed density (p=0.05) and higher weed control efficiency which resulted in more number of effective tillers (209.3), filled grains/panicle (83.7) and grain yield (3.97 t/ha).