Success story on SRI paddy -Zero tillage greengram(var. Samrat) in Garo Hills of Meghalaya.
M. Islam, Tarun Kr Das, Tanmay Samajdar, & N. Arun Kr Singh KVK, ICAR, West Garo Hills, Meghalaya
The farmer of Garo Hills depends totally on rainwater for cultivation of sali paddy and prolong mid season or late season droughts during critical growth stage resulted in considerable loss to the farmers. Conventionally, after Sali paddy, fields remain fallow in lowland, mainly due to excess moisture owing to seepage from surrounding hillocks in mid altitude. Draining water from paddy field completely at physiological maturity (about 10 days before harvest) creates favourable condition for successful cultivation of rabi crops following zero tillage after harvest of Sali paddy for enhancing cropping intensity, income and livelihood. Fallow land after rice might be due to traditional custom of free grazing of animals after Christmas (25 December). The resource conservation based innovation techniques of system of rice intensification (SRI) involves 10 days old seedlings at 1 seedling/ hill was transplanted in square system with 25 x 25 cm spacing. To address these problems of water scarcity and less production, resource conservation techniques of SRI methods of paddy cultivation using Ranjit variety was demonstrated in the NICRA villages. SRI method was introduced in five farmers field covering 1.5 ha area to 15 farmers. The average yield obtained by using SRI (46.53 q/ha) which was more than double as compared to traditional method of cultivation. These systems are gradually attracting farmer attention and more and more farmers are approaching the KVK to help them to demonstrate on their farm to cope with natural calamities like water stress, terminal drought due to climatic variability. After the harvest of Sali paddy, few pockets of farmers field were demonstrated with short duration (55 days) greengram variety Samrat to increase the income during off season (rabi) rather than traditional fellow land and obtained 3.83 q/ha yield. The REY of 59.30 q/ha was recorded with SRI paddy-Zero tillage greengram leads to gave maximum benefit of 2.44 compared to traditional paddy-fellow system. The farmers are very much satisfied to get two crops in a year from the same field and are very much interested to follow the technology in the coming years.
Scientist visit to pod formation stage of greengra field at Horipur village
RCT based Innovations SRI paddy yield (q/ha) Greengram yield (q/ha) System productivity (REY q/ha) Net return (Rs/ha) Benefit cost ratio SRI paddy-Zero tillage greengram 46.53 3.83 59.30 52450 2.44 Farmers’ Practice(Rice-fallow 22.78 - 22.78 10836 1.66
Experts visit to zero tillage greengram paddy field
Zero tillage greengram after harvest of paddy
