Hussein F. Abouziena, Ibraheem M. El-Metwally, H.M. El-Saeid and Megh Singh
Herbicides are often tank-mixed with fertilizers to save time, labour, energy, and equipment costs. However addition of some additives with glyphosate may result in reducing glyphosate efficacy. Therefore we evaluated the potential of three nitrogen sources (ammonium sulphate (AMS) at 2 or 4% w/v, ammonium nitrate (AN) at 1 or 2% w/v, urea at 1 or 2 % w/v), nonionic adjuvant (Induce at 0.05% v/v) and Zn at 250 g Zn/ha (1321 ppm) to enhance glyphosate efficacy on pig weed (Amaranthus retroflexus L.), crowfoot grass (Dactyloctenium egyptium L.) and yellow nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus L.) under greenhouse conditions. The results indicated that there were variations in susceptibility of the three weeds to glyphosate+adjuvant treatments. Addition of AN at 2% reduced the efficacy of glyphosate on crowfoot grass. There was an antagonistic effect between glyphosate herbicide and Zn; the phytotoxic effect of glyphosate on the three weeds was less than 50 %. Zinc tank-mixed with glyphosate resulted in a greater number of tubers and shoots per plant than the untreatedol. Addition of AN or urea at 2% reduced glyphosate efficacy by about 2.3 and 9 %, respectively, relative to their addition at 1%. Tankmixes of urea (1%), AN (1%), AMS (2%) and Induce adjuvant (0.05%) generally enhanced the efficacy of glyphosate (0.85 kg/ha), whereas the addition of Zn, as zinc sulphate, to glyphosate sprays adversely affected herbicide efficacy.