According to their report, the distribution of P. hysterophorus was limited to roadsides, rural villages, and urban areas with less abundance while all other IAPS had already interred to agricultural fields. However, the current investigation confirmed that the coverage of P. hysterophorus was more abundant in the cities. It is alert that the weed has already established itself and ready to move to agricultural fields such as the arable and grazing lands. Furthermore, the weed has started spreading from the area surrounding the Zeghibridge to the adjacent cropland and pasture on both sides of the river. In this particular study, there was no way to know when and how the plant was first introduced to the place; however, we speculated that the weed might have introduced with sand and stones used for the construction/maintenance of the bridge. Moreover, the presence of P. hysterophorus at the nursery site most likely speeds up its spread across the area. It should be noted that raising seedlings at the place infested with P. hysterophorus is like providing transportation to agricultural fields. This way, the weed will not only infest crop fields but also be able to travel long distances and cover large areas relatively within a short period. In general, P. hysterophorus is on the fast move to agricultural fields in the MZ.
The crop and livestock production in the area has been already constrained by many factors like lack of agricultural technologies, disease and pests’ pressure, and low production awareness of farmers. Thus, the invasion of Parthenium in agricultural fields, coupled with the existing problems, can be devastating and causes food insecurity. Therefore, the public administrators and policymakers of the regional government, in collaboration with all stakeholders, should take a decisive and timely decision to mitigate the weed when it is still sparse and small. The critical weed-free period has provided Ontario growers with the knowledge of when to control the weeds that cause detrimental yield loss in maize and soybean for quite some time. Researchers have also recognized that the critical weed-free period can vary from year to year and location to location undermining the potential utility and implementation of this integrated weed management strategy . Yet, research continues to be conducted as a better understanding of some of the underlying physiological mechanisms that underpin the critical weed-free period have recently been published In general,indoor cannabis grow system crops need to be maintained under weed-free conditions from the start of the critical weed-free period until at least the 10-leaf stage in maize and the R1 stage in soybean Ontario maize and soybean growers have numerous herbicide options for managing weeds during the critical weed-free period. Unfortunately, growers can sometimes miss registered herbicide application windows due to adverse weather conditions or mechanical breakdowns which leave large, highly competitive weeds present in the crop at a point beyond the critical weed-free period when rapid yield loss occurs.
At this time, growers would like to apply a high dose of postemergence herbicide to ensure effective control of these large weeds, but growers also are concerned that crop injury could negatively impact yield. Regrettably, the tolerance of maize and soybean to a high herbicide dose at a late POST application timing is largely unknown. The exception to this is maize, which can tolerate over two-fold of the maximum labeled dose of glyphosate applied at the 10-leaf stage with minimal injury and little to no yield loss . Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, few studies have been conducted in the absence of confounding weed competition effects that examine both a range of herbicides comparing relative crop tolerance and the tolerance of crops to a late POST herbicide application . Therefore, the objective of this research was to determine the tolerance of maize and soybean to a late application of select POST herbicides in the absence of weed interference. Maize exhibited excellent tolerance to the POST herbicides applied at the 9- to 10-leaf growth stage. At 3 DAT, only the sequential application of 2,4-D/atrazine caused significant visible injury of 9%.At 7 DAT, the sequential application treatments of dicamba/diflufenzopyr, foramsulfuron, and 2,4-D/atrazine caused 6, 8, and 9% injury, respectively.For example, 3% injury was observed for a single foramsulfuron application whereas the sequential application treatment caused 7% injury 14 DAT.Furthermore, a single application of dicamba/diflufenzopyr caused no injury, but the sequential application caused 6% injury 14 DAT.