Water use is lowered by using ‘Aerobic’ rice cultivation Tech.Home

Current method of rice cultivation utilises 5,000 litres of water for producing one kg of rice than its actual requirement of 3,000 litres. About 2,000 litres is lost due to flooding and seepage losses.

The new approach of rice cultivation called aerobic rice cultivation reduces water use in rice production and increases the water use efficiency. In simple words, growing rice plant as irrigated crop like cultivating maize and wheat in aerobic condition, where oxygen is plenty in soil.

The suitable areas for aerobic rice cultivation includes irrigated lowlands, where rainfall is insufficient to sustain rice production, delta regions where there is delay in water release from reservoir.

In aerobic rice cultivation, rice is cultivated as direct sown in non-puddle aerobic soil under supplementary irrigation and fertiliser with suitable high yielding rice varieties. Throughout the growing season, aerobic rice field is kept under unsaturated condition and field is irrigated by surface or sprinkler system to keep soil wet. Therefore, water productivity is reported to be higher in aerobic rice by 64-88 per cent (calculated as grams of grain produced per kg of water input) and utilises 3,000 to 3,500 litres of water to produce 1 kg of rice compared to rice raised under transplanted flooded system.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/