Search

Water scarcity and weed infestation are major challenges to soybean production. Therefore, two field experiments were conducted in a strip plot design including three replicates in the 2019 and 2020 summer seasons at Sakha Agricultural Research Station, Agricultural Research Centre, Egypt, to investigate the effect of three irrigation levels (I0 (100%), I1 (90%), and I2 (80%)), and six weed control treatments of pendimethalin (T1), oxyfluorfen (T2), bentazon + clethodim (T3), imazethapyr (T4), hand-hoeing twice (T5), and untreated check (T6) on annual weeds, physiological traits, water relations, and yield and its components of soybean cv Giza 111. Results indicated that intermediate irrigation levels lead to the highest yield and economic return, while the herbicide program that resulted in the greatest weed control gave the highest yield. The rate of weed infestation in field experiments was 19.7 and 21.8 t ha−1 dry weights, which decreased soybean yield by 56.9 and 57.1%, compared to treatment (T4). The interactions between 100 irrigation level (I0) and imazethapyr (T4), bentazon + clethodim (T3), and hand-hoeing twice (T5) gave the highest significant values of the most studied characters. Furthermore, under 90% irrigation, all weed control treatments give the best control of weeds and the highest values of the economic criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barley plants (cv. Giza 2000) are infected by Drechslera teres which causes net blotch disease symptoms and yield losses. Plants were treated with commercial molecular products such as Trichoderma asperilium (T34), eugenol compared to non-traditional compounds (potassium silicate, nano-selenium) and fungicides (Maven, Montoro, and Decent) which selected from 12 treatments according to their important effects on infected barley plants. Bio-arc, Tilt, Rush up, Curve, and Amisto treatments were left out because of their lower efficiency of some treatments and similarity of the active ingredients of some other of them. Disease severity (%) was significantlty decreased as a result of the selected treatments, except eugenol which showed less reduction than the control. Disease symptoms were suppressed and electrolyte leakage % was reduced significantly due to all treatments than the control treatment. As a consequence of treatments, endogenous reactive oxygen species (ROS) such as superoxide (O2−) was significantly elevated early after the inoculation, consequently, later on catalase (CAT), peroxidase (POX), and polyphenol oxidase (PPO) activities were increased significantly than the control. Elevated levels of O2− early after inoculation could play essential role in killing or suppressing the fungus and inhibiting disease symptoms as well as stimulated enzyme activities. Interestingly, the treatments were effective so that the yield characters (1000 K.W. and grain yield/plo) were increased significantly than the control treatment. These results indicated that the biological commercial product of Trichoderma asperilium 34 and non-traditional biological compounds in this research study are so effective and could be used as an alternative to fungicides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]