Driving home a strong message of saving every drop of water for future generations of Punjab, the experts of Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) have called upon the farmers to adopt climate smart water saving interventions in rice. Experts have advised shunning the cultivation of long duration rice varieties, transplanting ‘PR’ varieties after June 20, making judicious use of irrigation water, and adopting Direct Seeded Rice (DSR) under tar-wattar conditions.
Making revelations about last year’s paddy area, Dr GS Mangat, Additional Director of Research (Agriculture), informed that PR 126 became the top choice of the farmers, covering 33 percent of area under paddy in the state during kharif 2023. “As per the seed sale records, another variety PR 131 has also gained significant popularity among the farmers this season,” he told. The adoption of PAU developed paddy varieties along with their matching production and protection allows staggered sowing/transplanting of paddy, thereby, providing relief from the issues of scarce or lesser labor and window period availability between the harvesting of rice and sowing of the wheat crop, he said.
Dr Buta Singh Dhillon, Rice Agronomist, informed that the short duration paddy varieties consume 5-9 lesser irrigations and require lesser fertilizers as well as pesticides, thus, proving to be more rewarding economically, socially and ecologically. Further, he said that transplanting around June 25 results in the highest yield of most of the varieties. “The variety PR 126 performs even better under July transplanting, resulting in substantial saving of irrigation water (6 to 17% over early date),” he observed. Optimum sowing time for direct seeding of parmal rice varieties is the first fortnight of June and that of Basmati is the second fortnight of June, he advised, while cautioning against early transplanting which is likely to aggravate damage by insect-pests due to continuous host availability. Diseases like false smut, sheath blight and Southern Black Streaked Dwarf Virus disease observed during kharif 2022 are a matter of serious concern, he observed.
Further, Dr Mangat advocated alternate wetting and drying in Punjab and other regions as a water saving irrigation practice; it reduces the environmental impact of rice production through decreased water usage, methane emission (a greenhouse gas) and potentially increases the yield by lowering the incidence of insect-pests and diseases.
Direct seeded rice is another water saving intervention, said Dr Dhillon, stating that it results in saving of water to the tune of about 10-20 per cent besides increasing water recharge by 10-12 per cent along with significant reduction in global warming through the reduction of greenhouse gases emission.
Besides, around 15-20% of irrigation water can be saved by adopting Laser Land Leveler along with yield advantage and overall higher resource use efficiency in paddy, said Dr Dhillon. Ridges/bed transplanting on heavy textured soils can also help to save water, he said, while adding that basmati cultivation too has a potential to save water as its growing season coincides with the monsoon.
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