Evaluation of Critical Period of Crop Weed Competition for Enhanced Weed Management and Yield of Summer Pearl Millet

The field experiment was conducted at Instructional farm of Department of Agronomy, Navsari Agriculture University, Navsari during summer season of 2021 to 2023 to study critical crop-weed competition in summer pearl millet. There were 10 treatments comprising of initial weed free periods of 10, 20, 30 and 40 days after sowing (DAS) and weedy 10, 20, 30 and 40 DAS along with weedy till harvest (un-weeded check) and weed free till harvest (weed free check), were replicated thrice in the randomized block design. Results revealed that maintaining a weed-free condition from 20 to 40 DAS significantly increased the yield of pearl millet, whereas the lower yield was recorded when weeds were allowed to grow during this period. The maximum competition between crop and weed was between 20 to 40 DAS, which can be considered as critical period of crop-weed competition. To avoid the yield loss, integrated weed management can effectively overcome the problems of weed shift and development of resistance in weeds and reduce the weed seed bank and manage the weeds below the economic threshold level to avoid any economic loss in summer pearl millet.