Hindawi Publishing Corporation he Scientiic World Journal Volume 2013, Article ID 916408, 12 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/916408 Research Article Integration of Agronomic Practices with Herbicides for Sustainable Weed Management in Aerobic Rice M. P. Anwar, 1,2 A. S. Juraimi, 3 M. T. M. Mohamed, 1,3 M. K. Uddin, 3 B. Samedani, 3 A. Puteh, 3 and Azmi Man 4 1 Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia 2 Department of Agronomy, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh 2202, Bangladesh 3 Department of Crop Science, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia 4 Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute, 50774 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Correspondence should be addressed to M. P. Anwar; parvezagron@yahoo.com Received 6 July 2013; Accepted 27 August 2013 Academic Editors: T. Brock, R. Julliard, and S. Rossi Copyright © 2013 M. P. Anwar et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Till now, herbicide seems to be a cost efective tool from an agronomic view point to control weeds. But long term eicacy and sustainability issues are the driving forces behind the reconsideration of herbicide dependent weed management strategy in rice. his demands reappearance of physical and cultural management options combined with judicious herbicide application in a more comprehensive and integrated way. Keeping those in mind, some agronomic tools along with diferent manual weeding and herbicides combinations were evaluated for their weed control eicacy in rice under aerobic soil conditions. Combination of competitive variety, higher seeding rate, and seed priming resulted in more competitive cropping system in favor of rice, which was relected in lower weed pressure, higher weed control eiciency, and better yield. Most of the herbicides exhibited excellent weed control eiciency. Treatments comprising only herbicides required less cost involvement but produced higher net beneit. On the contrary, treatments comprising both herbicide and manual weeding required high cost involvement and thus produced lower net beneit. herefore, adoption of competitive rice variety, higher seed rate, and seed priming along with spraying diferent early- postemergence herbicides in rotation at 10 days ater seeding (DAS) followed by a manual weeding at 30 DAS may be recommended from sustainability view point. 1. Introduction Weeds are endemic in crops [1] and a constant problem in crop production because of their dynamic nature [2]. Despite modern control practices aimed at weed elimination, weed continues to be a ubiquitous and recurrent threat for crop production due to its ability to shit in response to manage- ment practices and environmental conditions [3]. Because of the diversity and plasticity of weed communities, weed man- agement should include diverse approaches and to be viewed as a continuous process [2]. Physical, cultural, and biological weed management was the only weed control strategy till 1940s. Since the introduction of herbicides, their amazing performance led to the belief that herbicide would solve the weed problem forever. But concern over the escalating problems of herbicide persistence and resistance in weeds and herbicide toxicity to crop has reinforced the need for alternative approaches [1]. Herbicides are oten blamed for environmental pollution [4] and impoverishment of the natural lora and fauna in agro ecosystem [5]. Long term eicacy and sustainability issues are also the driving forces behind the reconsideration of herbicide dependent weed management. In response to aforesaid problems, rice farming has been challenged to adopt a weed management strategy more res- pectful for environment. Weed management continues to be a huge challenge in aerobic rice which is highly vulnerable to weed infestation because of dry ploughing and aerobic soil conditions [6]. Proper weed management is considered to be one of the most important prerequisites to ensure satisfactory yield of rice [7, 8]. High weed pressure in direct seeded rice lowers the economic return, and in extreme cases