Maize, referred as Queen of cereals is the third most important cereal crop after rice and wheat in India. Maize serves as both human food as well as animal feed and for. Productivity of maize can be increased by proper nutrient management practices. Maize is a zinc responsive crop and found deficient in soils. Zinc as an essential micronutrient that has significant role in basic plant metabolic processes and enhances the growth, yield and quality of maize by stimulating chlorophyll production, photosynthetic activity, nutrient uptake and protein biosynthesis. The zinc application to maize crop either by seed treatment, soil application or by foliar spray by using inorganics have shown significant impact on growth, yield, nutrient uptake, quality and economics from investigations of eminent researchers with increasing trend in productivity. Application of zinc at 20-25 kg ha-1 to maize gave maximum grain yield (7500 kg ha-1) and benefit cost ratio ( 2.4 ) in maize.
Tillage is the most important age old practice, which is usefull to create favourable seed bed for sowing of seeds. It also plays a significant role in weed species persistence and its distribution in agriculture fields. Summer plough kills the weed seeds by exposing it to the sun light. Deep tillage helps for the development of enforced dormancy by burring the newly shredded seeds in the deeper layer of soil. Till now no herbicide is available to kill the weed seeds, tillage improves nitrogen mineralization thus in turn enhance the germination of weed seeds. After weed seed’s germination, controlling can be done easily with either spraying of herbicides, mechanical and manual means. Now a day’s conservation tillage or zero tillage concept is getting picking up. So it is highly important to study the effect of reduced tillage on weeds. Most of the research evidences found that under reduced tillage condition, weed seed accumulation is higher in upper layer of the soil. Annual weed population is predominant in reduced or no tilled soil. In no tillage system before planting soil was applied with non-persistent non selective herbicides to control weeds effectively.
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