TITLE:
Herbicides Assesment for Weed Control and Cost Analysis in a Tomato (Solanum lycopersicon L.) Crop in the State of Yucatan Mexico
AUTHORS:
Wilson Avilés-Baeza, Jorge Humberto Ramírez-Silva, Mónica Guadalupe Lozano-Contreras
KEYWORDS:
Vegetables, Weed Control, Phytotoxicity, Herbicides
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.10 No.12,
December
27,
2023
ABSTRACT: The tomato is very sensitive to weed competition, especially in the early stages after transplanting. In the state of Yucatan Mexico, weed control is carried out with the application of several herbicides such as glyphosate in pretrans-plantation. Currently, the use of glyphosate is prohibited, in the country, since 2020. For this reason, new herbicides are to be searched to replace it. A study was carried out in 2022 in the municipality of Muna, Yucatan, Mexico with the objective of assessing the effectiveness of various herbicides and their phytotoxicity in the crop. Four herbicides were selected and applied in combination with a contact herbicide (Bentazon): Pendimethalin, Clorthal Dimethil, Trifluralin and Ethalfluralin which were compared with a combined control treatment (Glyphosate + Manual Control + Paraquat). The cost reduction ($) of each treatment was calculated when the production cost of the producer was taken as 100%, against the production cost of each treatment. All herbicides were more effective to reduce the incidence of all kind of weeds. Only T1 (Pendimethalin + Bentazon) reduced the cost marginally by 2.69%, the other treatments were more expensive than the Control. When excluding the Bentazon Pendimethalin, Ethalfluralin and Trifluralin the costs can be reduced by 79.12, 64.91 and 61.86.