Herbicide selectivity in pre-sprouted seedlings of ‘CTC14’ sugarcane

Abstract

A new sugarcane planting system, using pre-sprouted seedlings (PSS) to replace sugarcane stem fragments, substantiates the hypothesis of this study that there might be seedling toxicity by herbicides that are sprayed at pre-emergence in traditional systems. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to study the selectivity of herbicides applied at pre-planting in PSS. A field experiment was conducted in a randomized block design, using seven treatments and four replications. Herbicides were sprayed and, 24 hours later, the seedlings were planted. At the beggining of seedling development, all herbicide treatments showed phytotoxicity, but the symptoms decreased with the growth and development of seedlings, with no difference in height, stem diameter, number of leaves, quantum efficiency of PSII (Fv/Fm) and dry matter of plants between treatments. There was also no significant difference in the yield and technological characteristics of stems. All herbicides used were selective to sugarcane seedlings when applied at pre-planting in the PSS system.