Abstract:
Field investigations were carried out at Sugarcane Research Station, Cuddalore Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, to evolve technology for controlling binding weeds in grown-up sugarcane crops during 2015-18. The experiments were laid out in Randomized Block Design with three replications and the sugarcane variety tested wasCoC(SC)24. The treatments constituted of T1 – PE. atrazine @ 1.0 kg/ha and Po.Emetribuzin 0.75 kg/ha @ 60 DAP, T2 – PE atrazine 1.0 kg/ha and Po.E 2,4D Na salt 1.25kg/ha @ 60 DAP, T3 – P.E atrazine 1.0 kg/ha followed by weeding and earthing up on 75 DAP, T4 – Mechanical weeding by power tiller (45, 90 and 120 DAP), T5 – Intercropping of sun hemp and its incorporation as insitu on 60 DAP, T6 – Detrashing and mulching at 150th&210th DAP, and T7 – hand weeding and manual removal of weeds on 45, 90 and 120th days and T8 – Control. Based on the performance of herbicides, the Pre-emergence application of atrazine @ 1.0 kg a.i/ha followed bypost-emergence application of metribuzin @ 0.75 kg/ha on 60 days after planting was the best treatment for controlling weeds in grown-up sugarcane and also the yield attributes increased in sugarcane compared to control. The critical period of weed crop competition in sugarcane ranged between 27 and 50 days (Srivastava et al., 2003). Sugar yield as well as juice quality greatly affected by the application of weed control treatments. The presence of weeds in the sugarcane fields and no control has also led to a decrease in sugar yield (Roshan et al., 2006.; Patel et al., 2007; Kanchan, 2009) in proportion of sucrose, purity and brix ( Bahadar et al., 2004; Annual Report, 2012) . Generally, the increase in by weed growth one kilogram corresponds to a reduction in one kilogram of the crop. The reduction in cane yield due to weeds ranged from 40-60% (Kadam et al., 2011).