Agriculture & Food, Volume 4, 2016

Abstract: Weed control is a serious drain on farmers’ human and financial resources, requiring adequately management techniques that is both efficient, cost effective and labour saving. Noting that groundnut cannot compete effectively with weeds, particularly 3 - 6 weeks after sowing, an experiment was therefore conducted at the Kogi State University Students’ Research and Demonstration Farm (Latitude 70 301 and Longitude 70 091 E), Anyigba in the Southern Guinea Savannah agro ecological zone of Nigeria to investigate the response of three varieties of groundnut to weeding regime and plant spacing. The experiment, a split plot design with three replications had Variety (Samnut 23, Samnut 24 and Angba-Chido) as factor A , Spacing (15 x 75 and 23 x 75 cm) as factor B and Weeding regime (no weeding after flower appearance, no weeding after peg appearance and weeding all through) as factor C. Data collected include: establishment count/ m2, canopy height, yield parameters such as pod yield, shelling percentage, harvest index, number of seeds per pod, hundred seed weight, grain yield, as well as total dry matter yield (biomass), weed identification, weed population / m2 and weed dry weight, among others. Analyzed data show that variety and weeding regime were not significant on crop establishment, but expectedly, sowing method significantly influenced plant/m2. However, since yield is the character for which most varieties are judged, Samnut 24 gave the largest biomass (21.05 t/ha), which was not statistically different from Angba-Chido which recorded 20.76 t/ha, with the least biomass observed in Samnut 23 (17.19 t/ha). In addition, Samnut 24 also recorded significantly, the highest pod yield/ha (8.46 t/ha), followed by Angba-Chido (6.50 t/ha), as well as the highest seed yield/ha (6.16 t/ha), which was also followed by Angba-Chido with 4.32 t/ha. While considering harvest index, Samnut 23 recorded 28.33%, Samnut 24 gave 40.19%, while Angba-Chido recorded harvest index of 31.31%; the highest therefore being from Samnut 24. Considering these yield related performance, Samnut 24 is recommended for farmers in the experimental area, while sowing groundnut at 23 x 75 cm as against narrower spacing such as 15 x 75 cm is also recommended as this gave better yield performance for most yield related parameters.