Physical weed control in organic fennel cultivated in the Fucino Valley (Italy)

A field experiment was carried out in 2004 in the Fucino Valley (Italy) one of the Italian most vocated areas for fennel cultivation. The aim was to test new strategies and equipments for physical weed control on organic fennel and to compare them with the weed control strategy ordinary adopted the by organic farmers of the Valley. The alternative strategies included both seed bed preparation before crop transplanting (false seedbed technique) and two different post transplanting weed control techniques based upon rolling harrowing In the first one rolling harrow was employed alone, while in the other one the rolling harrow was followed by precision hoeing. Manual weeding was applied both in traditional and in innovative control strategies. During the testing period, weed flora was monitored, fennel yield was determined at harvest. In addition both work chains characteristics and manpower use were determined. Results were quite interesting: the innovative strategies for physical weed control allowed to obtain relevant and high quality yields with a significant reduction of manpower use with respect to the organic traditional weed control system