INFLUENCE OF TILLAGE AND WEED MANAGEMENT METHODS ON CHICKPEA (Cicer arietinum L.). I. YIELD AND YIELD COMPONENTS

An experiment was conducted at the Agricultural College farm Duhok University Iraq to study the effect of different methods of weed control on chickpea growth and yield during the growing season of 2009. Ploughs types included disc plow, mould board plow, and cultivator. Weed management practices involved hand hoeing, trifluraline (soil incorporated), Aloxy and paraquat. Results indicated that plough types had no significant effect on any traits of growth or yield of chickpea. Hand hoeing significantly gave highest seed yield and weight of 100 seeds which were 120.4 kg per Donum (1 Donum = 1000m2) and 30.8 g respectively. Both hand-hoeing and paraquat treatments were superior in number of primary branches (3.5 and 3.4), number of pods per plant (12.3 and 11) and hay yield per donum (363.9 and 318.2 kg), respectively. The interaction of hand hoeing with cultivator and mould board was significant for most of traits under study. In addition, the interaction of paraquat withcultivator was significant in plant height and height of the lowest pod traits which were 41.3 and 23.1 cm, respectively.