. Weed management in blond psyllium (Plantage ovata)

. Weed management in blond psyllium (Plantage ovata)

ISHWAR SINGH, D. S. BHATI1 AND GANPAT SINGP

Agricultural Research Station, Rajasthan Agriculture University, Surnerpur 306 902

Received: February 1992

Blond psyllium (Plantage ovata Forskal) is cultivated on light-textured soils with dry sowing followed by light irrigation. This results in germination of weed seeds before the germination of crop seed .Besides, initial growth of blond psyllium is very slow. These 2 reasons attribute to suppression of the crop growth. Weeds cause heavy loss to pysllium crop in terms of yield. The present study was, therefore, conducted with the objective to find out suitable weed-control practice in blond psyllium.

The field experiment was conducted during the rainy seasons of 1989-90 and 1990-91 at Surnerpur. The soil was sandy loam containing low available nitrogen

(155.3 kgjha), medium phosphorus (32 kg/ ha) and high potash (301 kglha), with pH

9. The experiment was laid out in randomized block design, having 10 weed- control treatments (Table 1) with 3 replications. 'GI 2' psyllium was sown on 10 and 12 November in 1989 and 1990 respectively, keeping inter-row spacing of 30 cm using 4.5 kg seedlha. Before sowing the seeds were treated with Bavistin @ 2 g/ ha seed. In all, the crop was given 6 irrigations to meet this water requirement. The weed flora in the experimental field consisted mostly Chenopodiurn album L., C. murale L., Melilotus alba Desr., M. indica

All., Convolvulus anvensis L., Cynodon dectylon . Pers. and Asphodelus tenuifolius L. The weed index was worked out as :

Seed yield of -Seed yield of

treated plot control plot

Weed index = X 100

Seed yield of treated plot Seed yield along with all the yield attributes significantly increased due to application of 0.50 or 0.75 kg isoproturon as pre-emergence compared with the control (Table 1). It was mainly due to application of isoproturon which reduced the weed population and resulted in higher weed index. Thus, there was less weed-crop competition in the isoproturon-treated plots. In our study, neither hand-weeding (physical weed control) alone nor application of isoproturon (chemical weed control) alone was sufficient to achieve potential yield level of blond psyllium. Purushotham and Hosamani (1990) suggested that if weeds prevails at later stage, 1 hand-weeding has

.to be supplemented with the use of

herbicide to obtain higher grain yield from

-ho&m, s. M. M. 1990. Weed

management in transplanted rice. ~ndimr~oumal

ofAgmnomy 3s (3) :305-306.

Present address: 'All-India Co-ordinated Research Project on Management of Salt-affected Soils and Use of S.aline Water in Agriculture, College of Agriculture, Beechwal, Bikaner, Rajasthan