Impact of organic substance on growth attributes of mat type rice seedlings in the trays for machine transplanting

Abstract

Rice seedling for mechanical transplanting must fulfill the prerequisites of guideline seedling block with uniform density of seedlings and between bending pulls for rolling. The present study was carried out at the Farm Power and Machinery Department, Sylhet Agricultural University, Sylhet during Boro season/2018-19 with the objective to assess the impact of organic substance on agronomic attributes of mat type rice seedling. The seedling was raised on plastic rigid tray utilizing sandy clay loam (SCL) and sandy clay (SC) soil blending with the organic fertilizer of cow-dung (CD), rice bran (RB), rice husk (RH) and tea wastage (TW) at the rate of 0.0, 5, 10, 15 and 20%, respectively. Averaged across the rate of soil mixture, 5 to 15% of CD and RB with the both types of soil gave higher seedling height, leaf length and stem length while 20% of CD and TW also showed better result for number of leaves and stem thickness. Considering all parameters, 15 to 20% rice husk and tea wastage mixed with the sandy clay loam soil and 10 to 15% with the sandy loam soil gave good result. Be that as it may, seedling quality differed among the natural composts with the two kinds of soil more or less like CD > RB > TW > RH. Water requirement in the SC soil was more compared to SCL soil. It was observed that crack was formed on the sandy clay soil in tray. For both types of soil, the density of seeds in the mat at the rate of 6-7 seeds cm-2 was found at 80% of soil mixture along with rice bran. The findings of the study could be promoted widely in farmer’s field to raise better quality of mat type seedling for better performance of the mechanical rice transplanter which ultimately leads to getting better rice yield.