Effect of Planting Density on Increasing the Competitive Ability of Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) Cultivars against Weeds

The use of densitiy and cultivars that have high competitiveness are effective ways to control weeds in the integrated management system. The present study aims at increasing competitive ability of some dryland chickpea cultivars against weeds under different plant densities. Therefore, an experiment has been conducted as a split factorial in a Randomized Complete Block Design with four replications in the research farms of the Kurdistan Agricultural and Natural Resources Research and Education Center, Garizeh Agricultural Research Station, Sanandaj, Iran, during the 2020-2021 growing seasons. Experimental treatments include different plant density (30, 36, and 42 plants.m-2) as main plot, seven cultivars (Azad, Jam, Hashem, ILC482, Pirooz, Kaka, and a local variety), and weed management (no weeding and hand weeding during the whole growing season) as subplots. Results indicate that weeding operations are effective in increasing the number of pod per plant by 35.63%. Also, it is observed that there have beem significant differences among yield and yield components of the studied cultivars. ILC482 and Kaka cultivars have had the highest and lowest number of main branches at 3.82 and 2.58 values, respectively. The highest number of secondary branches obtained at a density of 30 plants.m-2. Furthermore, the highest number of pods per plant registered for Pirooz and Jam cultivars and the lowest number of pods per plant has been 7.98 in Hashem cultivar. The highest grain yield, indices of tolerance and competition and the lowest weed density observed for the Jam cultivar. In all examined cultivars, the number of seeds per square meter, grain yield and ability withstand competition index improve with increasing plant density so that the highest values are achieved at the plant density of 42 plants.m-2.