Vol. 12, Special Issue 10 (2023)

Author(s):
Saurav Baruah, Rijusmita Sarma Deka, Sukanya Gogoi and Prasanna Kumar Pathak

Abstract:
Morigaon district of Assam receives plenty of rainfall during the monsoon season leading to intermittent flooding. This results in loss to the paddy crop grown during the kharif season. Considering the situation KVK Morigaon introduced Assam Agricultural University developed submergence tolerant varieties of Ranjit Sub-1 and Bahadur Sub-1 through an On Farm Trial programme in the year 2016. The crop survived a submergence period of 12 consecutive days. After successful implementation of the OFT programme, KVK Morigaon conducted large scale demonstrations of Ranjit Sub-1 in an area of 157 hectares covering 430 numbers of flood affected farmers of the district under APART (Assam Agribusiness and Rural Transformation Project)-IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) project of KVK during the year 2020 and 2021. Some of the demonstration programmes were conducted in collaboration with a Farmers’ Producer Company (FPC) named POOHAR. The variety performed well in the demonstration programme and attracted other flood affected farmers of the district. It was observed from the pooled data that Ranjit Sub-1 recorded a 20.04% increase in yield as compared to the farmers’ grown varieties. Mean value of technology gap, extension gap and technology index observed were 495 kg/ha, 920 kg/ha and 8.25% respectively. Average net income gained by the farmers during 2020 and 2021 was Rs. 28,120.00 and Rs. 26,000.00 respectively, whereas the farmers’ grown varieties recorded net income of Rs. 16,480.00. and Rs. 15,560.00 during 2020 and 2021 respectively. Due to the growing demand of quality seeds of submergence tolerant varieties, the POOHAR FPC came forward and implemented a seed production programme under APART-IRRI project of KVK in the year 2021 and 2022. In both the years they were able to sell 90.05 tons of paddy seeds of Ranjit Sub-1 along with other submergence tolerant varieties of Bahadur Sub-1, Swarna Sub-1 and Bina Dhan 11 amounting Rs. 38,37,931.00. The Ranjit Sub-1 variety was also widely spread in the district through the efforts of the District Agriculture Office (DAO), Morigaon. During the current kharif season, the DAO, Morigaon is conducting demonstration of Ranjit Sub-1 in 3500 hectares of area covering 8750 numbers of farmers.