Vol. 12, Issue 5 (2023)

Author(s):
A Sathish, K Avil Kumar, P Raghurami Reddy and S Sridevi

Abstract:
Manual transplanting is the most common practice of rice cultivation in South and South East Asia. In India, 44 per cent area (19.6 M ha) is under transplanting in irrigated lowlands. It is not only time consuming, but also laborious requiring about 30 man days ha-1 besides causing drudgery to women folk. In all rice growing countries, there is an acute shortage of human labour during transplanting period due to diversion of labour to non-agricultural sectors resulting in delay of transplanting, reduced yield and lesser profit. To overcome these difficulties in transplanting can be substituted by direct seeding and machine transplanting which could reduce labour needs and increase the yields. Irrigated lowland rice not only consumes more water but also causes wastage of water resulting in degradation of land. In recent years to tackle this problem, many methods of cultivation have been developed. Among the different methods of water-saving irrigation, the most widely adopted is alternate wetting and drying (AWD) irrigation method.