Influence of planting patterns and integrated weed management practices on weed biomass, growth and yield of Spring maize

Weed infestation is a serious problem in corn production that impacts global production and with increasing food demand worldwide, certain manipulation is required in agronomic practices to improve corn production. This experiment was conducted on the Research farm of the Department of Agronomy, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara to evaluate the impact of planting patterns and integrated weed control treatments on maize crops during the Spring season of 2023 and 2024. The experiment was laid out in Split Plot Design with 3 planting methods in main plots viz., M1 - Flat sowing with single row, M2 - Flat sowing with paired row and M3 - Ridge sowing and 5 weed control treatments in subplots viz., T1 - atrazine + pendimethalin (0.75 + 0.75 kg/ha), pre-emergence followed by straw mulching, T2 - pendimethalin (0.60 kg ha-1), pre-emergence + intercropping cowpea f. b. earthing up (EU) and straw mulching (SM), T3 - intercropping dhaincha f. b. earthing up and straw mulching, T4 - 2 hand weedings (4 and 6 WAS) and T5 - unweeded (control) with 4 replications. The results indicated that sowing of maize crops on ridges produced significantly better crop growth and yield with significantly lesser weed biomass than paired row sowing. Among the weed control treatments, the intercropping treatments, followed by earthing up and straw mulching, were effective in weed control and produced significantly higher growth and yield than other weed control treatments. It can be concluded that planting maize on ridges with intercropping followed by earthing up and straw mulching produced the best results, which can be adopted by the farmers to sustainably improve the yield and earn better profits as the methods involved are environment friendly and do not require any additional investment.