SUITABLE TRAITS RESPONSIBLE FOR COMPETITIVE ABILITY IN RICE: AN OVERVIEW

In Asia Oryza sativa Lin. (Rice) is the most important food crop and the staple food of the majority of the populace in many areas of the world. In Rice production, various weeds are the main cause of serious yield decrease problems worldwide.

Weeds participate for getting an acceptable quantity of nutrients, humidity, light and the increasing area. Losses caused by needs vary from one country to another, depending on the predominant weed flora and the control, methods practised by farmers. In recent years, rice production has amplified with the introduction of high yielding varieties, but their maximum yield potential has not been fully realized owing to improper weed management. In India, weeds are mainly controlled manually in rice. However, manual weeding is becoming less cost-effective because of lab crisis at critical times or increased lab costs. Herbicides are substituting labour-intensive weeding at an increasing rate in rice as they are easy to use but the tremendous application of herbicide has resulted in herbicide-resistant crops, shifts in weed flora, and price of weed management to farmers and concerns about the environment.

This paper highlights the fundamental importance of competitive traits which are very significant for controlling weed outbreak.

There is an indispensable requirement to add potentially and ensure varied features of ecological weed control strategies especially preventive measures like herbicide resistance varieties, competitive varieties suitable traits in paddy genotypes possessing leaf number, photosynthetic rate, higher LAI (leaf area index), tiller number, early crop biomass, Increases chlorophyll content, increase specific leaf weight, the taller cultivars, flooding depth, planting density, straw mulching, flooding duration, and nitrogen supply, suitable nutrient management (especially organic amendments), incorporation of paddy straw, rice hull, and its residues in the soil changes the phytotoxic potential of allelochemicals, all these problems must be identified and must be given due attention for effective and sustainable weed control.