The recent labour shortage faced by the key granary states of Punjab and Haryana has prompted a shift in agricultural approaches. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, labourers have started migrating back to their villages, leaving these states facing a deficit in manpower. In response, farmers are now being encouraged to adopt a technique known as ‘Direct Seeding of Rice’ (DSR). This approach stands as an alternative to the conventional transplanting method.
Understanding Transplanting Paddy and Direct Seeding of Rice
Transplanting paddy and DSR differ significantly in their approaches to rice cultivation. Transplanting paddy involves preparing nurseries where paddy seeds are first sown and raised into young plants. These seedlings are then uprooted and replanted into a puddled field 25-35 days later, with the nursery seed bed taking up 5-10% of the area to be transplanted.
On the other hand, DSR eliminates this process by directly drilling pre-germinated seeds into the field through a tractor-powered machine. There’s no nursery preparation or transplantation involved in this method. Instead, farmers only have to level their land and provide one pre-sowing irrigation.
Protection Against Weeds: What Both Methods Offer
Both methods have unique ways of protecting crops against weeds. For transplanting, the first three weeks require almost daily irrigation to maintain a water depth of 4-5 cm. This effectively stops weed growth by denying them oxygen in the submerged stage. Contrarily, DSR uses chemical herbicides for weed control as field flooding isn’t practiced during sowing.
Benefits and Drawbacks of Direct Seeding of Rice
DSR comes with several significant benefits, namely water savings, reduced labour requirements and costs, and lower methane emissions due to a shorter flooding period and decreased soil disturbance. Yet, DSR isn’t without its drawbacks. These include the high seed requirement of 8-10 kg/acre compared to transplanting’s 4-5 kg/acre, mandatory laser land levelling, the non-availability of herbicides, and the need for timely sowing before monsoon rains.
Rice: Importance, Cultivation, and Leading Producers
Rice serves as the staple food for the immense majority of India’s population. A kharif crop, it thrives in high temperatures (above 25°C), high humidity, and regions with an annual rainfall above 100 cm. In lesser rainfed areas, cultivation is sustained through irrigation. Conditions in southern states and West Bengal even permit two or three rice crop cycles in a year. Remarkably, rice occupies one-fourth of India’s total cropped area.
Leading rice producers are West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Punjab, while high-yielding states include Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal, and Kerala. Although not traditionally rice-growing regions, Punjab and Haryana saw rice cultivation introduced in their irrigated areas in the 1970s due to the Green Revolution. Today, nearly all the land under rice cultivation in these states is irrigated. In terms of global contribution, India accounted for 21.6% of world rice production in 2016, securing the second position after China.
