WEED POPULATION DYNAMICS IN THE CORN CULTURE UNDER DIFFERENT MANAGEMENTS

This work aimed to study the weed population dynamics of weeds and their influence to analyze in the corn production with the reduction of the space between lines in no-tillage system. The study was conducted in 2003/04 agricultural years, at the Experimental Station of Coimbra - UFV. The experiment was conducted in a complete randomized block design. Treatments were arranged in a 3 x 3 x 2 factorial scheme with four replicates (three cultivars - UFVM 100, AG 9010 and AG 1051) three nitrogen application ways (0, 120 kg ha(-1) of N in planting and 30 kg ha(-1) at sowing + 90 kg ha(-1) at four fully expanded leaves) and two plant spacing (1.0 and 0.5 m). For the phytosociological study, a square of 0.30 m of side was used, thrown at random once in each treatment before the application of the herbicides and 30 and 60 days after the application. The species with the highest density was Artemisia verlotorium, whatever the time of assessment and management used throughout the sampling dates. The population dynamics and the mass accumulation dries of the plants were not influenced by the spacing of the corn, for the nitrogen fertilization and for the studied cultivars. The spacing reduction, from 1.0 m to 0.50 m, provided an increase of 8% in grains productivity.