The impact of weed control methods on sugar beet crop

Abstract

The effect of non-chemical weed control on organically grown sugar beet crop productivity and quality was tested at the Experimental Station of the Aleksandras Stulginskis University in 2015-2016. The aim of the experiment was to ascertain the influence of living mulch,mechanical (mellowing, cutting, mulch-ing) and physical (steaming) weed controlmethodson sugar beet productivity and quality parameters. There were tested 6 weed control methods: inter-row mellowing(controltreatment), cutting and mulch-ing with weeds, Persian clover, white mustard and spring barley, inter-row steaming. Different alternative weedcontrol methods usually had negative significant impact on the sugar beet crop yield except inter-row steaming treatment. In these plots,decrease of root yield was insignificantly less compared with control treatment. The effect of weed control methods onsugar beet root quality parameters was weakAgronomijos fakultetasVytauto Didžiojo universitetasŽemės ūkio akademij