Basmati rice, Deep tillage, Green manure, Non-chemical weed control, Puddled transplanted rice, Weed, Seedbank
There is a growing demand for organically produced food, including basmati rice, worldwide and organic farming is continuously gaining importance. An experiment was conducted with an objective to study weed seedbank and its management with non-chemical weed management approaches including tillage, plant density and green manuring, in organically grown basmati rice. The two-year study was conducted at research farm of Department of Agronomy, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India during (rainy) Kharif season of 2017 and 2018. Tillage has differential effect on vertical weed seed distribution as the maximum number of seeds of Dactyloctenium aegyptium (L.) Willd., Echinochloa colona (L.) Link, Trianthema portulacastrum L. and Cyperus iria L. in conventional tillage (CT) was observed in upper soil layer of 0-15 cm whereas in deep tillage (DT), most of weed seeds were displaced to deeper layer (15-30 cm). The lowest weed seedbank was observed with green manuring using sunhemp (Crotalaria juncea L.) crop raised by sowing seed of at 50 kg/ha before the transplanting of basmati rice and incorporating sunhemp plants into soil at 40 days after seeding it). Integration of differential tillage, green manuring and increased rice plant density resulted in low biomass of Echinochloa colona and Eclipta alba than weedy check. Rice growth, yield attributes and grain yield were found statistically similar in non-chemical weed management treatments and conventional agriculture treatment.