WEED MANAGEMENT IN WHEAT THROUGH COMBINATION OF ALLELOPATHIC WATER EXTRACT WITH REDUCED DOSES OF HERBICIDES

Allelopathy has potential to tackle concerns associated with indiscriminate use of synthetic herbicides. In order to reduce herbicide usage, allelopathic crop water extracts with reduced herbicides doses were tested for weed management in wheat during the year 2005-06 at research farm of the Department of Agronomy, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad.Sorghum and sunflower water extracts (WE) combinations each at 18 L ha-1 with reduced doses by 70% of mesosulfuron +idosulfuron (Atlantis 3.6 WG), mesosulfuron + idosulfuron(Atlantis 12 EC), metribuzin + fenoxaprop (Bullet 38 SC),bensulfuron + isoproturon (Cleaner 70 WP) and metribuzin(Sencor 70 WP) were compared at their label doses which were sprayed alone 30 days after sowing for weed control in wheat.Label dose of isoproturon was used as a standard treatment and a weedy check was also maintained. Overall weed density,dry weed biomass and wheat grain yield were significantly influenced by different combination of plant water extracts with reduced (70%) doses of synthetic herbicides. Combination of sorghum + sunflower WE each at 18 L ha-1 with reduced dose of metribuzin + fenoxaprop significantly reduced dry weed biomass by 92% comparable to label dose of mesosulfuron +idosulfuron (93%). Treatment combination of sorghum +sunflower WE each at 18 L ha-1 with reduced dose of metribuzin+ fenoxaprop by 70% produced maximum (2.82 t ha-1) grain yield with 34 % increase over control and it was significantly higher than its label dose to the extent of 17% increase in grain yield.