Abstract

Two field experiments were conducted at the experimental farm of Agronomy, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, Shalimar Campus in the kharif seasons of 2004 and 2005 to study the effect of various weed control methods on yield and yield attributes of soybean. All weed control measures registered significantly higher seed yields of soybean than weedy check. However, weed free treatments, hand weeding twice and both fluchloralin and pendimethalin integrated with hand weeding recorded far superior yields of soybean seed. Integrated use of herbicides gave better seed yield than their individual application. Similarly, higher doses of both herbicides gave more yield than their lower doses. Pendimethalin 1.5 kg ha^-1 and hand weeding once recorded comparable yields of soybean. Seed protein content was significantly greater under all weed control measures. Weed free treatment, hand weeding twice and pendimethalin integrated with hand weeding recorded comparable percentage of both these parameters; while, in case of oil content, hand weeding twice, higher dose of pendimethalin and both the herbicides at low rates, integrated with hand weeding recorded comparable oil content in soybean seed. Fluchloralin and pendimethalin at either of the two rates namely 1.0 and 1.5 kg ha^-1 gave statistically similar values of oil content as that recorded by hand weeding once. Lowest oil percentage was seen in the weedy check plots.

Key words: treatments, fluchloralin, pendimethalin, weed, soybean.