Influence of different crop establishment methods on productivity of rice–A Review

Abstract

The area under rice crop is decreasing year by year due to various factors such as increased cost of inputs, labour shortage and less profitability. Transplanting of rice seedlings in the traditional way is a labourious, time consuming and causes drudgery. Non-availability of labourers for transplanting at appropriate time leads to late planting, which results in poor yields. In rice, planting methods have an impact on the growth, yield attributes and yield besides cost of cultivation and labour requirement. Rice transplanting is done manually and requires about 306 man-h ha”1, which is roughly 42 per cent of the total labor requirement of rice production. At transplanting time, acute labor shortage results in increased labor wages and delay in the transplanting operation. Manual transplanting also results in a non-uniform and inadequate seedling populations. These problems necessitated the introduction of mechanized rice transplanting to achieve timely planting and better crop stands.