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Abstract
The objective of this study was to determine the effect of paddy rice ploughing techniques on water use and the yield of rice crop, as well as water use efficiency for rice growing in small-holder irrigation schemes. The study was conducted at a farmer’s field in Powo B sub-block of Maugo Irrigation Scheme. The period of study was from July 2019 to January 2020, which is the rice season. The experimental site was located in the vicinity of Olare Shopping Centre, Kamenya Sub-location, Kochia East Location, Kochia Ward, Rangwe Sub-County, Homa Bay County, Nyanza Region, Kenya in Maugo rice scheme in Kenya. In the study, four irrigation tillage practices were applied: ox-plough, conventional ox-plough, hand hoe and tractor ploughing. The results showed that conventional ox-ploughing consumed the highest amount of water at 1240 mm. The highest water use efficiency of 0.49 kg/m3 and highest yield of 5.7 tons/ha were observed for hand hoe ploughing. Use of the hand hoe ploughing technique increased yields by 20 percent, as compared to the conventional ox-ploughing. Therefore, the use of water for ploughing is not necessary in the study area. Future research will be needed to see how farmers are adopting the technology before scaling up to full mechanization, as partial mechanization was not profitable.
Highlights
Conventional tillage and ox plough had the minimum number of tillers of 19 after two weeks of transplanting (Table 2)
The study investigated the effects of different ploughing techniques on the number of tillers, rooting depth, water retention, yield and water use efficiency in experimental plots under irrigation in the Maugo rice field
Hand ploughing, harrowing and levelling resulted in the highest yield of
Summary
Rice from Asia was first introduced in Kenya in 1907 and is the third most important cereal crop after maize and wheat. Despite the annual increase in rice consumption at a rate of 1% in Kenya, production of rice has not managed to keep up with consumption as it has been fluctuating in the past 20 years between 45,000 and 80,000 tons per year. This forces Kenya to import rice annually because the national rice consumption is estimated to be 300,000 tons [1]. Rice production in Kenya between 2014–2018 stood at 3.84 tons/ha [2]
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