Rice

Crop Establishment

Nursery Preparation Transplanting

Nursery Preparation

The main objective of raising seedlings is to;

Obtain healthy planting material,
Utilize the mainfield till the seedlings become ready,
Minimize the cost by using less seed material .

Wet nursery

Nursery bed preparation

The area intended for nursery raising should have an assured water supply and an efficient drainage system. For raising seedlings for one hectare 20 cents of land area is required.
It should be dry ploughed twice and apply 1tonne of fully decomposed FYM or compost to 20cents nursery and spread the manure uniformly on dry soil.
Later, it should be irrigated and allowed to be wet for another two days.
Afterwards it should be puddled twice and the puddling may be repeated after a gap of one week.
This process of puddling contributes in obtaining good tilth, removal of weeds and also facilitates water retention.
Recommended inorganic fertilizers (DAP 40 kg or urea 16 kg + 115 kg of super phosphate) are to be applied after first phase of puddling.
After levelling and final puddling, beds of convenient length depending upon soil type and slope with width of 2.5 m are to be made, leaving 30 - 50 cm channels in between two beds.

Seed rate

Long duration - 30 kg /ha
Medium duration - 40 kg /ha
Short duration varieties - 60 kg /ha
Hybrids - 20 kg / ha

Seed treatment and sowing

Soak the seeds in Carbendazim or Pyroquilon or Tricyclozole solution at 2 g/l of water for 1 kg of seeds for 10 hrs and drain excess water
Or
Treat the seeds with talc based formulation of Pseudomonas fluorescens 10g/kg of seed and soak in 1lit of water overnight.
Soak the seeds for overnight in the water mixed with three packets (600 g/ha) of Azospirillum and 3 packets (600g/ha) of Phosphobacteria or 6 packets (1200g/ha)of Azophos. If biocontrol agents are used for seed treatment it can be mixed with this biofertilizer mixture. But fungicides should not be mixed with these bioinoculants.
For quick and good germination keep the soaked seed in dark gunny bag and leave for 24hrs for sprouting.
Sow the sprouted seeds uniformly on the seedbed, having a thin film of water in the nursery.

After care

Drain the excess water from the nursery bed after 18 to 24hrs of sowing to avoid water stagnation in the seed bed.
From 3rd to 5th day allow water to saturate the soil.
From 5th day onwards, increase and maintain the water depth to 1.5cm - 2.5 cm depending on the height of the seedlings.
To arrest the weed germination apply any one of the pre-emergence herbicides viz., Pretilachlor + safener 0.3kg/ha, on 3rd or 4th day after sowing.
For clayey soils to avoid root snapping, 4kg of gypsum and 1kg of DAP/cent can be applied at 10 days after sowing.

Dry nursery

This method is followed in sandy and loamy soil areas and also during the late receipt of canal water.
Nursery area required is 20 cents per hectare.
The field is dry ploughed 5-6 times to acquire the fine tilth.
Beds of 1 to 1.5 m width and convenient length are to be prepared. Channels are to be provided for irrigating and draining of the beds.
After preparing the beds they are to be wetted and 1 tonne of well rotten FYM, 2.5 kgs of P2O5 and 2 kgs of potash need to be applied and incorporated with spades.
Seed rate and seed treatment as that of wet nursery.
Sowing may be dry seeding. Seeds may be covered with sand and finely powdered well decomposed farm yard manure.
Irrigation will be given to wet the soil to saturation level.
Seedlings can be pulled out at 4th leaf stage.

Top

Transplanting

The puddled land has to be levelled uniformly before transplanting.
Levelling can be done by using an implement known as Wooden plank. In case of heavy soils planting has to be done one or two days after levelling but in light and sandy soils planting has to be done immediately.
During planting a thin film of water (2 cm) is to be maintained in the mainfield

Transplanting seedlings in the main field

Plant the seedlings at the correct age and at optimum spacing. When super seedlings are used, transplant 20-25 days after sowing in the 4th leaf stage for short and medium duration varieties.
In terms of days optimum age of the seedlings is 18-22 days for short, 25-30 days for medium and 35-40 days for long duration varieties.
In case of seedlings other than super seedlings, transplant at 4th or 5th leaf stage.
The root portion of the seedlings should be dipped for 15 - 30 minutes in the slurry prepared with Azospirillum 1 kg/ha and Phosphobacteria 1 kg /ha or Azophos 2 kgs/ha in 40 litres of water and then transplant them in the main field.

Particulars	Medium and low fertility			High fertility
	Duration
	Short	Medium	Long	Short	Medium	Long
No.of seedlings per hill	2-3	2	2	2-3	2	2
Depth of planting (cm)	3	3	3	3	3	3
Spacing (cm)	12.5 x 10	20 x 10	20 x 15	20 x 10	20 x 15	20 x 20
No.of hills/m2	80	50	33	50	33	25

Shallow planting at 3 cm ensures quick establishment and more tillers while deep planting of above 5cm depth leads to delayed establishment and reduced tillers.

Gap filling

Fill up the gaps between 7 and 10 days after transplanting.

Mechanical planting

To overcome the problems confronting manual transplanting, many transplanters were developed in the past involving the use of traditionally grown paddy nursery for mechanical transplanting.
However, several on-farm attempts made with different models of transplanters using the traditional root washed nursery were not successful because of the machine-related problems in use of the nursery.

Broadcasting of seedlings - Labour saving method

A new and novel method of rice crop establishment known as broadcasting seedlings will be the answer for shortage of labourers and escalation of the wages for transplanting.
With the same quantity of rice seedlings, broadcasting of seedlings can be accomplished by saving of one third of labourers required for transplanting without any sacrifice on yield.
Normally 20 days old seedlings of short duration rice varieties are transplanted by this method in all seasons except Thaladi or heavy rain season.
Seedlings requirement will be approximately 20% more than the line planting or equal to random planting.
The seedlings are broadcasted into the puddled levelled field by labour without using force, hence 50% labour saving as compared to line planting and 35% to random planting.
After broadcasting of the seedlings care should be taken to maintain thin film of water up to 7-10 days.
Grain yield will be equal to line planted crop and 10-12% higher than random planted crop.

Rainfed rice

Seed rate of 75kg/ha dry seed is adopted for any recommended variety.
To make the crop early moisture stress tolerant seed hardening with 1% KCl for 16 hours @ 1:1 seed :KCL solution ratio.and shade dried to bring to storable moisture.
At the time of sowing, treat the hardened seeds first with Pseudomonas fluorescens 10g/kg of seed and then with Azophos 2 kgs or Azospirillum and Phosphobacteria @ 600g each per ha seed.
Sow the seeds using seed drill or behind the country plough with 20 cm inter row spacing with a depth of 3 - 5 cm.
To ensure uniform germination sowing should be advocated before monsoon.

Modified Drum Seeder for Rice

The improved drum seeder for direct seeded rice saves 80 percent in the transplanting cost.

And also ensures uniform seed distribution with respect to time and maintaining uniform plant population per metre square.

The unit consists of a seed drum, main shaft, ground wheel, floats, furrow openers and handle. The seed drum is hyperboloid shape (truncated cone) with 200 mm diameter having 12 mm flat spikes of 25 mm length kept parallel to the axis of rotation. The slopes of the cone facilitate the free flow of seeds towards the metering holes. Nine numbers of seed metering hole of 10 mm diameter were provided along the circumference of the drum at both the ends at a row-to-row spacing of 200 mm. Two floats were provided on either side to restrict the sinkage and to facilitate easy pulling of the unit.

The cost of the unit is Rs. 4,200/-

It ensures:

Uniformity in seed sowing and plant population.
Reduction in seed rate and the cost of thinning.
Hill dropping of seeds and elimination of continuous drilling.

Top

Tamilnadu

Rice

About Rice

History

Morphology and Growth

Rice Management

Services Overview

The key services offered by Ikisan are:

System study, design and development of IT enabled solutions and services for the agri sector.

Execution of rural IT enabled projects on BOT/BOOT/Turnkey basis.

Development, Customization and Deployment of Ikisan's IPR protected software applications.

Providing support services and best management practices for augmenting the marketing development efforts of the groups agricultural input companies (NFCL and NACL).

Development and Dissemination of best practice and information though a unique multi lingual knowledge website for the agri sector.

Some of the key customers/partners that benefit significantly from our work include are Electronics Corporation of India Ltd, State Agricultural Marketing Boards, Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Tamilnadu, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Motorola Mobility (GOOGLE) etc.

As highlighted earlier Ikisan provides significant support to the market development and marketing efforts of NFCL and NACL by providing best practices and information across the agricultural input value chain - weather, soil, seeds, fertilizers, water, pesticides, output prices etc. that have enabled the companies to develop deep customer relationships and in turn enable them to grow above market growth rates. Recently example in fertilizers includes the development of Customized Fertilizer Grades (for NFCL across India that are crop and location specific have not only reduced the current consumption of fertilizers of farmers but have significantly enhanced crop yields and farmer incomes) that are expected to add significant revenues to the company.

Currently, agriculture value chain is driven by technical expertise. However, there is a lack of adequate Management knowledge and skills amongst the professionals. Therefore, Ikisan and XLRI, Jamshedpur have jointly developed an Agri Business Management Program for Agri-professionals and students. Ikisan provides the domain expertise while XLRI provides pedagogy. This program is a combination of virtual learning and campus based module at XLRI, Jamshedpur. This program has been highly appreciated.

Intellectual Property Rights for many software applications such as Field Manager, Vyapar, Mandi, Quick Solutions Systems, Management Time Table, Agri Information System and Agrecommerz belong to Ikisan. A significant recent development in this area is the introduction of Weather Based Crop Insurance. This entails setting up of Automatic Weather Stations, which provide dynamic village-level data essential for settlement of weather based insurance claims.