Research Article
Aklilu Agidie1, Samuel Sahl
Abstract
Water hyacinth is one of the world’s worst invasive weed. The weed has invaded Lake Tana. This study has been carried out with the aim of investigating the effect of some selected chemicals to control water hyacinth at shade level. The experimental design used was a Complete Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications. The plants were submerged thoroughly with different concentrations per treatment. The data was collected at a scale of 0% to 100% inhibition. Five eco-friendly chemical compounds, namely: Sodium chloride (NaCl), Potassium chloride (KCl), Glyphosate (C3H8NO5P) and acetic acid 99% (CH3COOH) with three concentrations (15%, 20% and 25%) were applied on foliar application under shade. Acetic acid and Glyphosate chemicals performed well in the controlling water hyacinth. The result indicated that, the efficacy increased as the concentration increased from 15% to 25%. Acetic acid showed significant variation compared to control, NaCl, and KCl at (p<0.01) and able to shrink and kill the water hyacinth tissue within a few days as compared to other treatments. 20% and 25% Glyphosate application rate also shrunk the leaves of water hyacinth gradually and the result was not statistically significantly different from the acetic acid treatment. Hence, Acetic acid 99% can be used as an option to control this weed.