Worried about rice productivity not keeping up with the population growth, I found this wonderful news. An innovative method developed in the African country Madagascar offers a way out. Called the System of Rice Intensification (sri), the method was developed by a Jesuit priest Henri de Laulani in the 1980s. Norman Uphoff bought the method into limelight. This scientist from the Cornell Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development, usa, stumbled upon sri while doing research in Madagascar.
Today sri is practised in 20 countries, including India. It has four components: soil fertility management, planting method, weed control, and water (irrigation) management. Several field practices have been developed around these components. The key ones are: soil nutrient management through adequate farmyard manure application, transplanting young seedlings (8 to 12 days old), transplanting with soil clump (along with seed) and regular weeding and protective irrigation to keep soil wet without flooding. Rice grown this way has larger root system and yields are almost double that of the conventional crops. The secret is that rice plants do best when a young plant is transplanted carefully in an area 25 cm long and 25 cm wide. This area is larger than that conventionally allocated to rice plants, but it ensures rice roots grow larger on soil kept well aerated with abundant and diverse soil micro-organisms.
But what about standing water requirements? Standing water only arrests weed growth; it has no other beneficial impact on rice plants. In the sri system, meticulous weeding ensures pests do not intrude in to the plant area.
Water conservation Studies have shown sri requires 30 to 60 per cent less water when compared to conventional cultivation methods. Biksham Gujja, policy advisor, Worldwide fund for Nature International, Switzerland remarks, "For a state like Andhra Pradesh this means a lot. The state cultivates rice in around 3.8 million ha consuming about 30 cubic km of water, annually. Adopting sri will save 10 cubic km of water, even by conservative estimates. That means Andhra Pradesh can redefine its priorities on using water."
Acknowledgement : This section sourced largely from this article.
Today sri is practised in 20 countries, including India. It has four components: soil fertility management, planting method, weed control, and water (irrigation) management. Several field practices have been developed around these components. The key ones are: soil nutrient management through adequate farmyard manure application, transplanting young seedlings (8 to 12 days old), transplanting with soil clump (along with seed) and regular weeding and protective irrigation to keep soil wet without flooding. Rice grown this way has larger root system and yields are almost double that of the conventional crops. The secret is that rice plants do best when a young plant is transplanted carefully in an area 25 cm long and 25 cm wide. This area is larger than that conventionally allocated to rice plants, but it ensures rice roots grow larger on soil kept well aerated with abundant and diverse soil micro-organisms.
But what about standing water requirements? Standing water only arrests weed growth; it has no other beneficial impact on rice plants. In the sri system, meticulous weeding ensures pests do not intrude in to the plant area.
Acknowledgement : This section sourced largely from this article.
No comments:
Post a Comment