Effect of different crop establishment methods on rice (Oryza sativaL.) growth and yield – A review

Rice is grown mostly through transplanting in India, in spite of the fact that transplanting is cumbersome practice and requires more labour. The inadequacy of irrigation water and scarce labour coupled with higher wages during the peak period of farm operations, invariably lead to delay in transplanting. To overcome this problem, farmers are gradually switching over to direct seeding under puddle condition. Wet seeding (Sowing pre-germinated seed on to puddle soil) reduces substantially the amount of labour needed for growing of rice crop. The wet seeding also helps to harvest the crop by 8–10 days earlier than transplanting. It eliminates the use of seedlings and operations such as nursery preparation care of seedlings, pulling, bundling, transporting and transplanting. The demand for more irrigation water and seed rate with transplanting and direct sowing methods signifies the importance of the other methods of rice crop establishment such as system of rice intensification (SRI) to save water. With proper water and weed management under SRI and wet sowing we can get similar yields as that of transplanted rice. An attempt has been made in this paper to review the effect of establishment methods on rice crop yield.