Weeds Associated to Different Genotypes of Cocoa in the Ecuadorian Amazon Region

ABSTRACT: This work was conducted in the Centro de Pesquisa, Pós-graduação e Preservação Amazônica (CIPCA), located in the Ecuadorian Amazon Region, with the goal to analyze the presence of weeds in promising clones of cocoa. The EET-95, EET-96 and EET-103 promising clones were evaluated, and the control sample was CCN-51. To do so, the relative frequency and distribution of the existing weeds were determined, as well as their biomass, which was statistically analyzed by the ANOVA of a factor and the HSD Tukey’s test. The presence of weeds was influenced by the studied genotypes, due to the fact that promising clones were associated to high frequency and distribution, such as Cyperus odoratus, Megathyrsus maximus, Sauvagesia erecta ssp. erecta. Other species appeared to be associated more to the CCN-51 clone, such as Scleria pterota, Paspalum conjugatuns and Rottboellia cochinchinensis. Higher weed biomass was verified in clone CCN-51.