Effect of cutting on productivity and associated weeds of canola

Abstract

Dual-purpose canola means cutting or grazing the crop and then letting it to re-grow and produce grain with no or little yield penalty similar to dual-purpose cereals. A field experiment was conducted to study the effect of cutting on seed and biomass yields, weed density, fresh and dry biomass of canola at New Developmental Farm of the University of Agriculture, Peshawar during winter 2009- 10. The experiment consisted of cutting treatments i.e. cut and no cut was in Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications. Cutting treatments significantly suppressed weed density, weed fresh and dry biomass and seed and biomass yield of canola. Cutting of canola for fodder 70 days after sowing considerably trimmed down weed density and their fresh and dry biomass. Similarly, it also radically decreased seed and biomass yield of canola. It is concluded that canola can be used for both fodder and seed production but at the cost of about 27% yield penalty though weeds are suppressed.