EARLY CROP ESTABLISHMENT OF RAINFED LOWLANG RICE BY SLIT SEEDING

The uncertainty of rains at the onset of wet season (WS) and the drought risk involved hinder growing more than one rainfed lwoland rice crop per year. Establishing transplanted rice well into the WS leaves insufficient moisture in the soil for subsequent crop. Rice establishment early in the season gives the farmer better opportunities to grow a crop after rice. An experiment was conducted startign in 1993 to evaluate dry seeding of rice through slit soil seeding. It is done utilizing the vertical metering slit seeder for conserving soil moisture coming from the first rains in the early WS to sustain germination and establishment of the seeding at least until the succeeding rains under therainfed lowland (RL) environment. The treatment consisted of slit-seeding the PSBRc 14 into the tilled and nontilled plots at 100kg/ha and at depths of <10 mm (shallow seeding) and 60-70m (deep seeding). The control treatment was broadcast seeded on tilled soil and harrow to cover the seeds The superior crop establishment observed in 1995 WS experiment on nontilled, slit-seeded plots confirmed the results observed in 1993 WS and 1994 WS experiments. Emergence in deep seeding was not significantly different from shallow seeding in nontilled plots giving an average yield of 2.1 t/ha in all slit-seeded plots. This offers an advantage of reduced energy in put in nontilled shallow seeding. However, heavy weed infestation has to be addressed at the early stage of rice in nontilled soil to get the full advantage from slit seeding. The consistently better crop establishment observed in slit seeding over that of broadcast seeding in the WS of 1993, 1994 and 1995 also demonstrates that the slit seeding technology can be adopted with confidence in the rainfed lowland field condition to reduce the risks involved in broadcast seeding.