Comparative Study on the Performance of Rice Seedlings Raised by Single Seedling Nursery Tray Method and Conventional System

Abstract

Rising of rice seedlings is among the important factors responsible for better growth and development of rice plants as well as increasing the grain yield. Conventional method of raising rice seedlings requires larger space, time (24 hours seed soaking and 34 hours in jute bag up to sprouting) and labour intensive procedure, which limits the production capacity of rice seedlings. Transplanted seedlings raised by newly developed single seedling nursery tray have not been compared with the conventional system in the field so far. The objective of this study was to evaluate the average number of tillers per hill at 60-days after transplanting (DAT). The experimental design was one treatment [newly developed single seedling nursery tray (T1)] and three replications. The age of the seedlings raised by the newly developed single seedling nursery tray at the time of transplantation was 8 days. Plants were randomly selected and number of tillers were counted and recorded at 60 DAT from each treatment plot for further analysis. Average number of tillers (32.27 tillers/hill) in the case of the conventional system at 60 DAT using 8 days old seedlings was collected from previously published data. One sample T test was used to analyse the data using SPSS statistical analysis software (version 21) at 95% Confidence Levelof the Difference. The result of the analysis showed significant difference between them, with larger average number of tillers in T1 (68.56 tillers/hill) than the existing average number of tillers. The study depicted that using the newly developed single seedling nursery tray is one of the options to increase the number of tillers in SRI farming in order to increase the number of effective tillers, number of panicles, straw yield and grain yield of rice plants.