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 weak.