ASSESSMENT OF ORGANIC WEED MANAGEMENT PRACTICES FOR PROFITABILITY AND ENERGETICS OF MAIZE-BASED CROPPING SYSTEM IN NORTH-WESTERN HIMALAYAN REGION

作者：G. HETTA, Surinder Singh Rana, Bhawna Babal, G.D. SHARMA, R. SHARMA, S. KUMAR · 发表于：Applied Ecology and Environmental Research · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.15666/aeer/2104_34033417 · 被引用次数：4 · 研究领域：Crop Yield and Soil Fertility

Weeds have emerged as a problem and their control is the most expensive input for sustainable organic crop production.We are constantly looking for ways to increase organic crop yields while using less energy and resources.The evaluation work was therefore undertaken from 2017-19 in an on-going trial commenced since 2016 under AICRP-WM (All India Coordinated Research Project on Weed Management) at Palampur, Himachal Pradesh.There were ten treatments viz., hoeing, stale seed bed + hoeing, raised stale seed bed + hoeing, mulch, stale seed bed + mulch, raised stale seed bed + mulch, intercropping, crop rotation, intensive cropping and chemical check, tested in maize based cropping system.The highest green cob yield of maize was produced under the chemical check treatment (10323 kg/ha).Statistically equivalent green cob yield was produced under RSSB + hoeing, that was 9208 kg/ha.While considering the system as a whole, it was found that intercropping followed by chemical control and RSSB + hoeing produced the most energy from the crops' primary products.Crop rotation treatment combined with RSSB resulted in significantly greater energy use efficiency (12.3%).Intercropping had the highest energy intensity (2.39 MJ/rupees), followed closely by crop rotation (2.37 MJ/rupees), while SSB + hoeing had the lowest energy intensity (1.74 MJ/rupees).