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The Role of Weeds in the Productivity of Amazonian Bush Fallow Agriculture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 October 2008

Charles Staver
Charles Staver
Affiliation:
Vegetable Crops Department, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
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Summary

Three effects of herbaceous weeds on the productivity of a bush fallow system cropped with maize, cassava and plantain were identified in four experiments carried out in Central Amazonian Peru. First, early weed control is needed to minimize crop yield reductions. Weeds reduce plantain raceme weight and days to flowering, but not cassava yield, if weeding is done early. Second, fallows must be long enough to reduce weed seed banks to levels tolerable to farmers. While fallows of between two and five years eliminate herbaceous weed biomass present at the beginning of the fallow, weed seed banks decline linearly through ten years of tree cover. Third, with successive clean-weedings to reduce weed competition, tree and shrub numbers and their proportion of total non-crop biomass decline, while the amount and proportion of herbaceous weeds increase. Tree and shrub regeneration is reduced by longer cropping periods, more frequent weedings, greater crop cover, and shorter fallow periods.

Type
Research Article
Information
Experimental Agriculture , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , July 1991 , pp. 287 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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