Effect of Different Kinds of Environmental Freindly Materials on the Growth of Rice

Abstract

Over last three decades, farming system has been directed to maximize agricultural production and to increase farmer’s income through adoption of high–yielding crop varieties with high input of agro–chemicals (Yoo, 1999). These farming practices have resulted in many problems like food safety, soil fertility, and deterioration of fresh and underground water–quality (Bouwnan, 1990; Duxbury and Moiser, 1993; Jones and Schwab, 1993). Loess soil being one of the important economic consequences of quaternary environmental change, in that it resulted in large areas of soil that have an agriculturally more favorable particle size distribution and mineralogical composition than other common sediment types and also plays an important role in maintaining yields of arable crops (Catt, 2001). Although the environment is very important, no use of fertilizers and agricultural chemicals causes significant yield loss in rice production (Ku et al., 1999). Thus, environmental–friendly agricultural practice has been drawing a global attention as a promising alternative for sustainable food production. Lately circulated environmental–friendly agricultural materials include microbial products, amino acids, pyroligneous acid, charcoal, mixture of charcoal with pyroligneous acid (MCPA), chitosan and brown rice vinegar etc (Choi, 1998). Loess soils are among the most fertile soils in the world, principally because the abundance of silt particles ensures good water supply, aeration, root penetration, and seedbed production (Catt, 2001). Research reports indicate favorable effects of MCPA and charcoal in improving soil productivity and yield in crops such as sweet potato, sorghum, melon, sugarcane (Tsuzuki et al., 1993; Uddin et al., 1994; Shibayama et al., 1998). However, there have been no attempts for the application of these materials on paddy soil and loess “Hwangto” for rice, which is one of the most important crops in Asia. Therefore, this study was carried out to investigate the effect of environmentally–friendly materials treated in paddy soils and loess soil “Hwangto” on the growth and yield of rice.