Direct Seeded Rice: a Climate Smart Village Technology

Growing rice in the transplanted condition is a common practice across the globe in general and in India particularly. Since ages it is a traditional practice as it offers certain advantages like ease of transplanting, avoiding weeds and reducing deep percolation losses of water. Of late due to the increased cost of cultivation associated with traditional rice cultivation and with growing environmentally conscious, countries like India with the highest rice growing area are pointed out at global summits for their puddling activity and are blamed for environmental deterioration with release of methane and oxides of nitrogen. One of the recent advances happened in rice cultivation methodology is the introduction of direct-seeded rice (DSR), wherein rice is sown in unpuddled fields or uplands. Recent studies happening across the globe have reported its worthiness’ over puddled systems. With the aim of evaluating its potential in comparison to traditional transplanting, a comparative study was taken in three successive Kharif seasons from 2018 to 2020 at a farmers’ field in Khammam dist. of Telangana, India. Though numerically higher rice yield (60 q/ha) was recorded with the transplanting system it was statistically on par with DSR (57.2 q/ha). Whereas DSR system recorded higher monetary returns (Rs. 59835/ha), Benefit-cost ratio (B:C) (2.38) and productive tillers per meter (70.63) in comparison to the transplanted system where net returns, B:C ratio and productive tiller per meter are Rs. 52750/ha, 1.95 & 45.90 respectively.