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Control of weeds in orchard with the use of herbicides in order to reduce their competition with fruit plants for water and nutrients.
Weed
Any plant growing out of place is a weed.
• It competes with the fruit trees for water and nutrients.
• Weeds sometimes act as intermediate or alternate hosts to certain pests, diseases which cause heavy losses to the main crop.
• The weeds may be crop specific or season specific i.e. annual, biennial and perennial weeds.
• In India, yield loss due to weeds is approximately 33 per cent of total production, and on an average 30 per cent of the total production cost is spent on tillage operations alone.
• Therefore efficient weed control is necessary for profitable fruit production.
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Significance of weed control in orchard:
• Fruit trees may be much larger than most weeds, but they have root systems that do not compete well with other plants.
• Where, cover crop or weeds grow the bulk of tree roots form in the second and third foot of soil.
• If competition is reduced, the trees form the highest percentage of their roots in the much more biologically active first two feet of soil depth.
• In areas with poor quality soils, the orchardist should not give the best foot of soil to the weeds.
Damages caused by weeds:
• Increase in cost of cultivation: Weed control may take about 30% of total cost of expenditure thereby causing reduction in the net returns.
• Reduction in crop yield: Weeds being hardy and resistant against unfavourable conditions complete for water and nutrition with crop plants and reduces the yield to about 60–70%.
- Reduction in the quality of produce: Certain weeds eaten by or fed to the mulching animals cause undesirable flavour to the milk. Similarly, if the produces mixed with weed seeds leads to decrease in quality.
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