Control of weed component in maize crops when applying postemergent herbicides

Obtaining high and stable yields of corn is possible only under conditions of maintaining a cultivation technology as well as a complex system of protection against pests. This system is based on the protection of maize crops against weeds, as this crop is considered to be one of the weakest, competing with weeds, in agrophytocenosis. The peculiarities of maize crops protection against the most common types of weeds should be based on the knowledge of their species composition, taking into account the specific soil and climatic conditions of the crop cultivation. The article investigates into the effectiveness of certain postemergent herbicides and their tank mixtures applied on maize crops and aimed at reducing the presence of weeds as well as improving the yield indices. The study was conducted on low-fertile sandy soils of Polissia. The presence and number of weeds in maize crops were monitored. It was ascertained that monocotyledonous weed species, namely Setaria pumila, Echinochloa crus-galli, and Elymus repens were slightly prevalent in the agrophytocenosis of maize. Dicotyledonous species were presented by Chenopodium album, Amaranthus, and Persicaria lapathifolian. The separate application of herbicides Titus (water-soluble granules) and Prima (ssuspension emulsion) resulted in effectiveness of weed reduction at 56.1% and 47.5%, respectively. The study of tank mixtures of analogous agents showed a notably higher efficiency. The highest index of technical efficiency amounted to 92.5% before the weed control was obtained in the experiment with the norms of the examined preparations 0.05 kg/ha and 0.4 l/ha. The yield indices in this variant were also the highest and amounted to 5.7 t/ha, which is 3.0 t/ha more compared to the weed control. In case of manual weeding, the number of weeds was slightly higher compared to the better variant of the tank mixture under study. The yield index in this version of the experiment was 5.3 t/ha