Plant Protect. Sci., X:X | DOI: 10.17221/32/2025-PPS

A green approach: Effects of organic weed control on weed diversity and phenologyOriginal Paper

Sarwan Kumar¹, S. S. Rana², Gaytri Hetta², Navjot Rana³, Graciela Dolores Avila-Quezada⁴, Ahmed Z. Dewidar⁵, Mohamed A. Mattar ORCID...⁵

¹ PAU College of Agriculture Ballowal Saunkhri SBS Nagar Punjab, Nagar Punjab, India

² Department of Agronomy, CSKHPKV Palampur, Palampur, India

³ Department of Agronomy, School of Agriculture, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, India

⁴ Facultad de Ciencias Agrotecnológicas, Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua, Chihuahua, México

⁵ Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water Chair, Prince Sultan Institute for Environmental, Water and Desert Research, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

A long-term experiment in the maise-pea cropping system was conducted in Palampur from October 2019 to September 2021 as part of the All India Coordinated Research Project on Weed Management (AICRP-WM). Ten methods for managing weeds, namely, T₁ – hoeing, T₂ – raised stale seedbed + hoeing, T₃ – stale seedbed + hoeing, T₅ – stale seedbed + mulch, T₆ – raised stale seedbed + mulch, T₄ – mulch 5 t per ha, T₇ – intercropping fenugreek in rabi season and soybeans in kharif season, T₈ – crop rotation (soybean, mustard, and maise-peas alternately), T₉ – intensive cropping (additional crops of mustard in the fall and buckwheat in the summer), and T₁₀ – chemical check (pendimethalin in rabi season and atrazine in kharif season). A randomised complete block design with three replications was used to assess the weed flora, consisting of eight weed species during kharif 2020, fourteen during kharif 2021, and thirteen during the rabi seasons 2019–2020 and 2020–2021. The weed species composition changed significantly in the second year compared to the first. In contrast to the chemical check, the organic weed control treatments showed a variety of weed flora, as indicated by diversity and phytosociological studies. Long periods of germination/emergence, blooming, and fruiting were found in phenological research. Rabi weeds appeared between October and January and between May and August. They flowered and produced fruits or seeds in March and September, respectively, and matured in April and September. Crop rotation followed by Raised stale seedbed (RSSB) + hoeing + earthing resulted in a much greater yield; however, in the second year, the chemical check was comparable to this treatment. Additionally, crop rotation increased profitability over time.

Keywords: Shannon–Wiener index; cropping system; non-chemical management; maize–pea rotation; yield response

Received: March 2, 2025; Revised: October 1, 2025; Accepted: October 7, 2025; Prepublished online: April 28, 2026