V. HARINI*, B. SANDHYA RANI, P. MAHESWARA REDDY, A. PRASANTHI AND V. CHANDRIKA

Department of Agronomy, S.V. Agricultural College, ANGRAU, Tirupati-517 502.

ABSTRACT

An experiment was conducted during kharif, 2023 on sandy loam soils of dryland farm of S.V. Agricultural College, Tirupati campus of Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University, Andhra Pradesh, in a randomized block design with eleven treatments and three replications. Among the weed management practices, hand weeding (HW) twice at 20 and 40 DAS (T10) recorded significantly lowest weed density and biomass, higher weed control efficiency, growth parameters, yield attributes, grain and stover yield of pearl millet, but it was equally effective with PE application of pendimethalin 0.5 kg ha-1 fb HW at 30 DAS (T₂) and PE application of atrazine 0.5 kg ha-1 fb HW at 30 DAS (T₁). At 75 DAS, yield attributes of pearl millet viz., number of panicles m-2, panicle length, panicle diameter, number of grains panicle-1 and test weight and grain and stover yield were significantly higher with hand weeding twice at 20 and 40 DAS (T₁₀), which was at par with pre emergence application of pendimethalin 0.5 kg ha-1fb HW at 30 DAS (T₂) and pre emergence application of atrazine 0.5 kg ha-1 fb HW at 30 DAS (T₁). The next best treatment was pre emergence application of pendimethalin 0.5 kg ha-1 fb post emergence application of carfentrazone ethyl 20 g ha-1 at 25 DAS (T₈), which was on par with pre emergence application of pendimethalin 0.5 kg ha-1 fb post emergence application of pyrithiobac sodium 0.05 kg ha-1 at 25 DAS (T₄). Significantly lower yield attributes and yield were registered with weedy check (T₁₁).

KEYWORDS: Pearl millet, Herbicide, Weed control efficiency, Weed density, Weed management, Yield.