Combination of dry-wet land Preparation to Increase Plant Population and Yield under Direct Seeding Rice

Abstract

Rice as a staple food for more than half of the world’s population is commonly grown by transplanting seedlings into puddled soil. Lack of labour and water crisis drive the search for alternative planting system. Direct Seeding Rice (DSR) method may significantly decrease the cost of crop establishment, however, DSR required improvement in land preparation to maintain seed germination. Combination of dry-wet land preparation using Farming Bulldozer (FB) and DSR lead to higher yield due to increasing of plant population. A field experiment was carried out in the 2020 Wet-season at ICRR to examine 2 methods of puddling and different planting system. The study was arranged in a fractional factorial design. The first factor was land preparation which were (L1): land preparation using FB and (L2): hand tractor. The second factor was crop establishment, (D1); DSR using drum seeder with iron-coated seed, (D2) DSR using drum seeder with non-coated seed and (D3): transplanting. Each treatment was set in 5000 m2, with 4 replications. The results showed that (1) combination of dry-wet land preparation and DSR iron-coated yielded at 5478 kg/ha, significantly higher compared to hand tractor (HT) and DSR-non coated seed which yielded at 3698kg/ha. (2) The key yield component that had a large influence on grain yield under direct seeding was the number of productive panicles per m2. Perfect land levelling was crucial to maintain high percentage of seeds germination leaded to sufficient number of standing crop (tiller) per area.