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Contrasting Responses of Weed Communities and Crops to 12 Years of tillage and Fertilization Treatments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Anne Légère ,
F. Craig Stevenson  and
Noura Ziadi
Anne Légère*
Affiliation:
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Saskatoon Research Centre, 107 Science Place, Saskatoon SK S7N 0X2, Canada
F. Craig Stevenson
Affiliation:
142 Rogers Road, Saskatoon, SK S7N 3T6 Canada
Noura Ziadi
Affiliation:
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, CRDSGC, 2560 Boulevard Hochelaga, Québec QC G1V 2J3, Canada
*
Corresponding author's E-mail: legerea@agr.gc.ca
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Abstract

Minimizing inputs such as fertilizers, herbicides, or tillage may be sought by producers to satisfy economic as well as environmental goals. One of the challenges in reducing inputs, whether synthetic fertilizers or herbicides, or substituting a synthetic nutrient with an organic source, is to identify practices that will provide optimum growing conditions for the crop while maintaining an adequate level of weed control. Our objective was to measure the cumulative effects of 12 yr of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) fertilization treatments applied to two tillage systems [conventional tillage (CT) vs. no tillage (NT)] in a corn–soybean rotation on weed communities and crop yields. Residual (postherbicide treatment) weed species assembly was determined by multivariate analysis and was influenced mainly by tillage, with weeds more strongly associated with NT than with CT. Diversity of weed communities as measured by richness, evenness (E), and a diversity index (H′), and total weed biomass were greater for NT than for CT. Nutrient treatments had little or no effect on these parameters. Corn yields were reduced by 70% in the absence of N and by 25% in NT compared to CT treatments. Soybean yields were reduced in NT with increasing P rates compared to other treatments, but reductions never exceeded 10%. Overall, corn and soybean had different responses to treatments, with corn yields being far more affected by fertilization and tillage than soybean yields. Conversely, the absence of tillage had a much greater effect than the absence of nutrient input on weed community assembly and biomass, suggesting the importance of a weed management program specifically tailored for NT systems.

Keywords

Corn, Zea mays L., soybean, Glycine max (L.) MerrNitrogenphosphorusweed diversityconservation tillageno tillzero tillage
Type
Weed Biology and Competition
Information
Weed Technology , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 2008 , pp. 309 - 317
Copyright
Copyright © Weed Science Society of America 

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