STUDY ON CHEMICAL WEED MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND ITS IMPACT ON CROP GROWTH AND BIOACTIVE COMPOUNDS OF INDIAN PENNYWORT (CENTELLA ASIATICA L.)

An experiment was conducted at college of Horticulture, Mudigere during 2023-24 to evaluate the effectiveness of pre and early post emergent herbicides on managing weeds and its impact on crop growth, herbage yield and bioactive compounds.The experiment was designed in Randomized Complete Block Design with eight treatments and three replications.The results of the study revealed that among the herbicidal treatments, the treatment T 6 (Oxyflurofen 23.5% EC at 1 ml/l + one hand weeding at 45 DAT) recorded the lowest weed density (23.00 number/cm 2 ) and higher weed control efficiency (97.90 %) at 60 days after transplanting (DAT) along with weed index of 12.22 per cent.Among the various herbicides, the treatment T 6 recorded maximum values for all the growth parameters studied such as stolon length (113.64 cm), rosette length (24.04 cm), rosette diameter (20.07 cm), number of leaves per rosette (12.13), leaf area (23.60 cm 2 ) at harvest and total chlorophyll content of 3.59 mg/g at 120 DAT.Additionally, T 6 also attained early maturity of 123 days with significantly maximum fresh and dry herbage yield (1146.67 g/m and 207.78 g/m, respectively).The significantly higher total terpenoids yield (47.69 kg/ha) was observed in the treatment T 6 (Oxyflurofen 23.5% EC at 1 ml/l + one hand weeding at 45 DAT).