Rice grain yield increase with
transplantation of differential age of nursery in System of Rice
Intensification and its impact on farmers of Eastern U.P.
Department of Genet=
ics
and Plant Breeding,
Varanasi-221005, UP
System of Rice Intensification (SRI) is
boon in the context of our country where agricultural land is decreasing da=
y by
day with the increasing population that creates additional demand for food.=
To
meet the food requirement our farmers are using more and more weedicides, chemical fertilizer, irrigation and
insecticides/pesticides that have adverse effect on soil health/quality and=
its
productivity. The poor farmers are loosing interest in rice cultivation as =
its
profitability is declining due to increased input cost. SRI promises to
increase yield of rice substantially by transplanting young age (< 15 da=
ys)
seedlings (one seedling per hill) with increased spacing for better tillering and limited required irrigation (dry to wet
condition) with judicious application of fertilizer and pesticides.
Keeping this in view, experiments were
conducted during kharif of 2004 and 2005 for finding out
appropriate age of seedlings for transplanting in SRI to realize maximum yi=
eld
in rice cultivars of various duration. It was observed that 10 days seedlin=
gs
exhibited better impact on grain yield, number of tiller/plant and root bio=
mass
per plant (per hill) as compared to seedlings of other age in early maturing
varieties, however medium maturing varieties showed equally good response <=
span
class=3DSpellE>upto 12 days seedlings, while late maturing varieties=
viz.,
MTU 7029 and BPT 5204 showed similar response up to 16 day old nursery. Significant reduction in yield was=
found
after 12, 14 and 16 days of nursery transplanting in early, medium and late
maturing rice cultivars.
The result of front line demonstration=
s of
kharif 2005 with rice variety HUR 3022 (early
maturing) and HUBR 2-1(medium maturing new cultivars developed at Banaras Hindu University, notified in April 2005) sho=
wed
about 10 percent increase in grain yield with the same input conditions on
transplanting the seedlings of 12-14 days.
****