Efficacy and Economics of Urea Spray Technology for a Locally Discovered Rice Cultivar Haridhan in Bangladesh

Abstract

Foliar spray of fertilizer does not only increase the crop yields but also reduce the quantities of fertilizer applied through soil. An attempt was taken to find out the efficacy and economic benefit of urea spray technology for getting higher yield using a local rice cultivar Haridhan and a modern rice cultivar BRRI dhan56. The research work was conducted at the Agronomy Field Laboratory, Department of Agronomy, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh during the period from July to November 2015. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. Results revealed that foliar spray of urea solution had significant effect on several yield contributing characters. It was found that treatment T4 (where 50% of the recommended dose (RD) of urea was applied directly to soil by 2 equal splits and 20% of the RD of urea was applied as foliar spray with three equal splits at 30 DAT, 45 DAT and 60 DAT) gave significantly higher number of effective tillers hill-1, number of grains panicle-1, grain yield, straw yield and biological yield than that of any other treatments. Both the varieties gave significantly higher yield with the treatment T4. In case of cost effectiveness, it was found that treatment T1 (where no urea was applied) exerted lowest cost of production (60,124 BDT ha-1), but, treatment T4 provided highest gross income (122,800 BDT ha-1), net income (60,436 BDT ha-1) and benefit cost ratio (1.97) as well as lowest cost per unit of product (5.27) for the varieties. The highest cost of production was found in case of treatment T6 where traditional method of urea was applied. Therefore, the present study concluded that about 30% recommended dose of urea/ha can be saved in each rice growing season by applying urea as foliar spray.