WEED DENSITY AND STRAWBERRY YIELD AS AFFECTED BY HERBICIDES AND MULCHING TECHNIQUES

A field experiment was carried out to evaluate the effect of different row spacing and weed control methods on weed density and strawberry yield. The strawberry variety “Chandler” plantlets were imported from Swat for conduction of the experiment. Three different row-row spacings (30 cm, 60 cm and 90 cm) and eight different weed control strategies i.e. Stomp (pendimethalin) @ 2.5L, Dual gold (s-metolachlor) @ 1L, Percept (haloxyfop-p-methyl) @ 0.9L ha^-1, white plastic mulch, wheat straw mulch, saw dust mulch, hand weeding and weedy check were used in the experiment. Using an RCBD design with split plot arrangement, the row-row spacings were assigned to main plots while different weed control methods were allotted to sub plots. The results showed maximum weed density of 165 m-2 recorded in treatments of 90 cm row spacing while lowest weed density of 131 m-2 was recorded in 30cm row spacing. Similarly, among the weed control treatments maximum weed density (262 m^-2) was noted in weedy check and minimum (65 m^-2) was observed for hand weeded plots followed by herbicide Percept (114 m^-2) and white plastic mulch (117 m^-2). Highest number of fruit plant^-1 and total fruit yield (kg ha^-1) noticed for 60 cm row spacing while lowest was recorded for 90 cm row spacing. Similarly, among the weed control strategies hand weeding followed by percept herbicides resulted better in the above mentioned parameters as compared to weedy check. It is concluded that Percept herbicide with 60 cm row spacing is very effective for controlling weeds in strawberry, while among mulches white plastic could be used to obtained more yield of strawberry in agro-ecological conditions of Peshawar.