No tillage with weed follows the principles of conservation agriculture i.e. no/minimum tillage, mulching and crop rotation. The objective of this study is to find the appropriate management to sustain both weeds and crop in same field through resource participation.
Studies have shown that plants are able to sustain in diverse communities which can be explained by greater plant production, which results from complementarity, positive interactions, and greater resource acquisition. The resource usage through decomposition of litter in above and belowground ecosystem are key processes linking plant and soil in the terrestrial ecosystem. Most of the terrestrial net primary production enters the detritus pool as dead organic matter following recycling of nutrients which are important process which impacts over the availability of nutrients resulting to vegetation growth.
The resources partition is uncertain during the early stages which generates competition between the crops and the weeds. Hence to reduce the competition, we purposed three treatments i.e. zero, once and twice slashing of weeds. With the frequency of slashing weeds various changes in plant biomass as well as biological and chemical changes in soil ecosystem may be observed. The weed which are cut are used as mulching resources which can change the amount of organic matter in soil. Slashing also changes the abundance and richness of weed species. We hypothesize that there is higher decomposition rate in frequently slashed plot due to higher accumulation of organic matter and higher soil animal activity.