reduce herbicide use by combined application of cultivator and band spraying in sugar beet

in order to reduce herbicide utilization, a 3-year field experiment was carried out with integration of mechanical and chemical weed control methods; in mechanical method, three types of blades (curred- bed knife, square- turn knife and sweep) were used. chemical control was done with chloridazon (wp 80%) and desmedipham (ec 15.7%) in two spraying sheme: once band sparying with 2 l h-1 & twice band sparying with 1 l h-1 of herbicides with 10 days interval. combinations of chemical and mechanical control treatments were compared with conventional control methods including hand hoeing and overall field spraying with 6 l h-1 of herbicides. the results indicated that the best method of weeds control was the combination of cultivation with square-turn knif and once band spraying with 2 l h-1 of herbicides. generally, our results showed that band spraying and cultivation, can reduce herbicides usage about 66% that is important from economical and environmental point of views.