RESPONSE OF PEANUT TO WEED CONTROL MANAGEMENT AND NANO-ZINC FOLIAR APPLICATION IN GROWTH, YIELD, AND QUALITY TRAITS

Abstract

A field experiment on a local peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) cultivar transpired in the spring season of 2021 at the Al-Hussainiya region, Holy Kerbala, Iraq (Latitude: 32.6160; Longitude: 44.0249). The completed study aimed to determine peanut response to weed control, foliar application of nano-zinc, and their interaction in growth, yield, and quality traits. The experiment laid out in a split-plot design with two factors (weed control and nano-zinc foliar application) had three replications. The nano-zinc concentrations (0, 50, and 100 mg L-1) occupied the main plots, with the weed control treatments kept in sub-plots. Weed control included the control (T0 – no weed control), manual hoeing (T1), and weed control with pre-emergence (pre-em) herbicides, i.e., Trifluralin (T2) and Pendimethalin (T3), and post-emergence (post-em) herbicides, viz., Oxyfluorfen (T4) and Clethodim (T5). The results showed that post-em herbicide Oxyfluorfen gave superior enhancement on the vegetative dry weight, pods per plant, seeds per plant, total pod yield, protein, and zinc in the seeds with increased values of 52.0%, 265.1%, 254.5%, 211.9%, 13.2%, and 25.5%, respectively, compared with the control treatment. Nano-zinc (100 mg L-1) foliar application led to a significant increase in the above traits with increased rates of 2.5%, 21.2%, 40.6%, 7.4%, 8.2%, and 89.2%, respectively, compared with the control. The interaction between both factors showed significant superiority compared with no weeding and separate application of weed control combined with chemical herbicides and nano-zinc application. The interaction between the post-em weed management (Oxyfluorfen) and nano-zinc (100 mg L-1) application showed highly superior compared with other treatments in the studied traits.