¹Faculty of Plantation and Agriculture, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia

²Faculty of Agriculture, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Email: nur_anisah@uitm.edu.my

Aerobic rice production is a revolutionary way of rice cultivation in well-drained, non-puddled, and non-saturated soils condition with very minimal water requirement. However, weed management is a challenging issue in aerobic rice field, owing to no standing water to suppress weed germination upon early stage of rice development. High weed infestation has threatened the aerobic rice sustainability, which demands an efficient and cost-effective weed management technique. The control efficacy of 13 common herbicide treatments, consisting of either a single application of herbicides or sequential application of herbicides were evaluated under field condition in two planting seasons at Universiti Putra Malaysia. Regardless of the planting season, the experimental plots were highly dominated by Echinocloa colona, Cyperus iria and Eleusine indica, with summed dominance ratio above 11%, as compared to other weed species. The control efficacy of each herbicide treatment was estimated from the weed dry weight. It was observed that herbicide treatments, the sequential application of pretilachlor fb propanil/thiobencarb (T3), propanil/thiobencarb fb bentazon/MCPA (T5), and bispyribac-sodium fb bentazon+MCPA (T11) significantly produced higher weed control efficacy over the other herbicide treatments.