Weed management strategies to reduce costs and amount of herbicides in the Mauritian sugar cane industry
| MSI09P4347 | |
| Seeruttun, S. Barbe, C. Gaungoo, A. | |
| Weed management strategies to reduce costs and amount of herbicides in the Mauritian sugar cane industry | |
| ISSCT Agronomy Workshop: Sugarcane production: integration among sugar, alcohol, residue cycling and sustainability, 24-29 May 2009, Uberlandia, Brazil: [Programme and Abstracts] | |
| book chapter | |
| 2009 | |
| p. 67 | |
| Abstract only | |
| En | |
| En | |
| Since the 1970s, weed control in sugar cane in Mauritius has been achieved by two or three herbicide applications per cropping season, and is often complemented by manual weeding. The costs of this weed control practice, necessitating between 6 and 10 kg a.i ha-1 yr-1 of herbicides, was estimated at US$ 225 ha-1 in 2004. A project initiated in 1998 to develop strategies to reduce the amount of herbicides and costs of weed control was completed in 2005 and recommendations made thereafter to growers. The new strategies are based on the critical periods of weed control (CPWC); field trials revealed that the CPWC started at least six weeks after planting or harvest and ended between 14 and 20 weeks later. The CPWC was further reduced by at least four weeks by adopting the 'dual rows' spacing. The use of new pre- and postemergence herbicide treatments, e.g. a tank-mix consisting of amicarbazone and trifloxysulfuron + ametryn, enables control within the CPWC by prOViding a very good post-emergence control of most weeds present prior to onset of CPWC and a relatively long residual activity to reach the end of CPWC; all this resulting in the savings of at least one herbicide application per season. In plant cane, mechanical weeding has also been tested and proposed as an alternative to herbicides during the first 12-16 weeks after planting. In ratoon crops, the new strategies also promote adoption of green cane trash blanketing, an effective means of controlling weeds. Growers, particularly with the reduction in price of sugar and the increasing costs of herbicides and labour, are successfully adopting the new weed management strategies | |
| sugarcane weed management weeds herbicides cost reduction mechanical weeding trash blanketing weed control critical periods | |
| Mauritius | |
| Sugarcane: Weeds, weed control and management | |
| Weed control | |
| 2009-06-01 | |
| En | |
| LIB | |
| CAT | |
| 1 | |
| COWA |