Studies on tolerance of chickpea to some pre and post-emergence herbicides

Abstract

Herbicides application is an integral part of farmer’s crop management in modern agricultural systems. Weeds always cause serious losses in legumes due to poor competition ability. In order to quantify the tolerance of chickpea against some pre and post-emergence herbicides, a pot study was carried out in the department of Weed science, The University of Agriculture, Peshawar Pakistan during 2012-13 and 2013-14. The pre emergence herbicides includes pendimethalin and s-metolachlor while, the post emergence herbicides comprised of Clodinafop-propargyl, fenoxaprop-p-ethyl and di-methyl urea. The chickpea variety Karak-I was sown in the pots and the trial was arranged in CR Design repeated three times. During the investigation data were recorded on different growth parameters of chickpea plants including both aerial and underground parts. The results revealed the all treatments had a significant effect on all the examined parameters of chickpea except nodule fresh and dry biomasses. However, the toxic effect of pre emergence herbicides on chickpea was significantly higher as compared to post emergence herbicides. The minimum number of nodule plant-1 (17.83), plant height (50.50cm), and seed protein (14.13%) was recorded in Pendimethalin treated pots. However, the highest seed protein content of 21.75 and 21.15 % were recorded for control and fenoxaprop-p-ethyl treatments respectively. Thus, it is concluded from the present data that chickpea has less tolerance for pre emergence herbicides pendimethalin and S-metolachlor as compared to post-emergence herbicides so farmers are advised to give preference to post emergence herbicides instead of a pre emergence while controlling weeds in chickpea through chemicals.