Improving competitive ability of chickpea with sowthistle

An experiment was conducted to examine the extent of root and canopy interference of chickpea with sowthistle. In this experiment sowthistle was surrounded with either two or eight chickpea plants according to the following partitioning regimes: full competition, shoot competition, and root competition. The performance of sowthistle grown in full competition with two chickpea plants was the same as those grown in root competition only. Also, there were no significant differences between sowthistle grown under the canopy of two chickpeas and the control ones, where there was no competition. On the other hand sowthistle grown with eight chickpea plants were significantly suppressed in full, canopy or root competition. It was concluded that the roots of the chickpea cultivar tested were sufficient to suppress the growth of sowthistle, whereas canopy interference from chickpea was insufficient to suppress sowthistle growth. In order to improve the competitive ability of chickpea with sowthistle, either the seeding rate should be increased or the canopy of individual varieties should be manipulated.