Selectivity of herbicides applied to pre-emergent cotton crops

Abstract

The cultivation of cotton has great economic and social importance as it is the most widely used fibre in the textile sector. It is however a crop that is highly sensitive tweeds, and there are few selective herbicides for the crop. With this in mind, this study aimed to evaluate the selectivity of herbicides applied to pre-emergent cotton crops. The herbicides, alachlor, S-metolachlor, diuron, prometryne, trifluralin and oxyfluorfen were applied both individually and in mixture to the variety FMT-701 in the towns of Diamantino and Campos de Júlio, Mato Grosso. The experimental design used was of randomized blocks with 16 treatments and four replications. To evaluate selectivity, assessments were made for height at 36, 66 and 150 days after application (DAA), for phytotoxicity at 14, 21, 29 and 36 DAA, for growth at 21 and 49 DAA, for the number of bolls at 141 DAA and for cotton-seed yield at 193 DAA. The data were submitted to joint-analysis and the Scott-Knott cluster test (p> 0.05). The results indicated that some treatments resulted in lower plant height in certain evaluations, and that a large part of the treatments caused injury in the initial stage of cultivation. It was found that the treatments did not produce significant differences for the characteristics of plant growth, number of bolls and cotton-seed yield, proving that all the treatments assessed may be used in weed management.