Weeds are the major constraint in crop production and mostly managed by hand weeding manually. But, ever increasing labour wages has made manual weeding uneconomical in spite of the yield benefit. A field experiment was carried out during summer 2021 at Zonal Agricultural Research Station, Gandhi Krishi Vignana Kendra, University of Agricultural Sciences, Bengaluru, Karnataka to analyse the yield and economics of weed management in direct seeded rice. The experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design with twelve treatments and three replications. The treatments consisted of seven herbicides, three allelochemicals, hand weeding and unweeded check. All the treatments recorded significantly higher yield and economics when compared to unweeded control. Among all the herbicide treatments, significantly higher weed control efficiency, yield attributes and grain yield of summer direct seeded rice was recorded with bispyribac sodium 40 g ha-1 as post emergence and the same treatment has also recoded higher net returns and B:C ratio followed by bensulfuron methyl + pretilachlor 660 g ha-1 as pre emergence. Even though hand weeding at 20 and 40 DAS has recorded highest yield attributes and grain yield, the B:C was lower than bispyribac sodium40 g ha-1 as post emergence due to high cost of manual weeding. Unweeded control has recorded lowest yield attributes, yield and monitory returns.

Direct seeded rice, bispyribac sodium, bensulfuron methyl + pretilachlor, allelochemicals, economics

From this present study, it can be inferred that, under the present scenario of labour scarcity and high labour wages, application of bispyribac sodium 40 g ha-1 as post emergence or bensulfuron methyl + pretilachlor 660 gha-1 as pre emergence were reported to recoded higher weed control efficiency, yield attributes, grain yield as well monitory returns in summer direct seeded rice.

Kommireddy Poojitha, K.N. Kalyana Murthy, M.T. Sanjay and G.N. Dhanapal (2022). Yield and Economics of different Weed Management Practices in Summer Direct Seeded Rice (Oryza sativa L.). Biological Forum – An International Journal, 14(4a): 199-202.