Cultural and mechanical weed management options for organic wheat production

Abstract:

Organic wheat growers across India face the same bottleneck: weeds. Without herbicides, yield losses of 25–45% are common unless non-chemical alternatives are timed well. This research compared six cultural and mechanical weed management options — stale seedbed, hand weeding twice, mechanical hoe twice, wheat-straw mulch at 5 t ha⁻¹, inter-row cultivation with a wheel hoe, and untreated control in organic wheat (cv. NIAW-301) at Rahuri, Maharashtra, during rabi 2022–23. Hand weeding at 25 and 45 DAS gave the highest grain yield (3.67 t ha⁻¹), but mechanical hoeing came close (3.51 t ha⁻¹) at half the labour cost. Stale seedbed reduced weed density by 42% before sowing but didn’t fully control late-emerging species. Straw mulch suppressed weeds by 38% and conserved soil moisture but depressed yield slightly (3.28 t ha⁻¹) due to temporary N immobilisation. These findings give organic wheat farmers in Maharashtra a menu of practical, chemical-free weed control tactics ranked by effectiveness and cost.