Water and Fertilizer Use Efficiency of Rice under Raised Bed Cultivation

Abstract

Rice production is well known to be extremely demanding for water and fertilizer. The supplemental application of water and fertilizer are pre-requisites for higher water and fertilizer use efficiency. Conventional cultivation method lead to losses and reduced water and fertilizer use efficiency. That's why, the present study was undertaken to introduce advance cultivation technique. The aims of this study to investigate water and fertilizer use efficiency of rice under various fertilizer application methods such as fertilizer broadcasting, fertigation, deep placement of Urea Super Granule (USG) and foliar spray in raised bed planting compared to fertilizer broadcast in conventional planting for aman and boro season. Different field experiments were conducted during aman (summer, non-irrigated) season and boro (winter, irrigated) season. The rice variety Swarna and BR 28 were selected as a testing plant for aman and boro season, respectively. The experiments were laid out in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. Results showed that foliar spray of N in raised bed planting provided best growth parameters compared to fertilizer broadcasting, fertigation, deep placement of USG in raised bed and fertilizer broadcast in conventional planting for aman season. Likewise, foliar spray of split N fertilizer in raised bed planting provided best yield components such as grains panicle-1 and 1000-grains weight compared to fertilizer broadcasting, fertigation, deep placement of USG in raised bed and fertilizer broadcast in conventional planting for aman season. Foliar spray of N in raised bed planting provided highest value of agronomic efficiency of fertilizer N for aman season rice. Fertilizer broadcast in raised bed planting produced highest water use efficiency for aman season rice. In the subsequent experiment, foliar spray in raised bed planting provided best growth parameters with respect to panicle length and non-bearing tiller m-2 compared to fertilizer broadcasting, fertigation and Urea Super Granule (USG) in raised bed and fertilizer broadcast in conventional planting for boro season. In addition, Split foliar application of N in raised bed planting gave highest value of agronomic efficiency of fertilizer N for boro season rice among other fertilizer application method. This study concluded that foliar spray in raised bed planting was best in both aman and boro season rice production in respect with growth, yield, water use and agronomic efficiency compared to fertilizer broadcasting, fertigation, deep placement of USG in raised bed planting and fertilizer broadcast in conventional planting.