Agro-Economic Assessment of Mechanized Rice Establishment Practices in Northwestern India: A Comparative Study

• Published in: International journal of plant production 2024-12, Vol.18 (4), p.623-637
• Main Authors: Kurmi, Ramkishor, Lande, Satish Devram, Mani, Indra, Sahoo, Pramod Kumar, Bhowmick, Prolay, Jain, Niveta, Kumar, Rajeev, Singh, Chandu, Ray, Mrinmoy, Babu, Subhash
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agriculture; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Life Sciences; Plant Ecology; Plant Physiology
• ISSN: 1735-6814; 1735-8043
• DOI: 10.1007/s42106-024-00313-3

Mechanizing rice cultivation is essential to enhance operational efficiency, profitability, and resource-effectiveness while minimizing dependency on labour workforce. The agro-economic feasibility of rice establishment methods namely Conventional-Manually Transplanted Rice (CTR), Machine Transplanted Rice (MTR), and Dry-Direct Seeded Rice (DSR), was assessed for analysing their compatibility to mechanized rice cultivation in India. Based on two-years field experiments in sandy loam soil, field data of agro-economic scenario were analysed for prominent basmati rice variety PB-1509 of Northwestern India, during kharif season of 2022 and 2023. The CTR results 7–9% higher yield than MTR and DSR, during both the seasons. However, improved growth parameters like effective tillers/hill, grain fertility, panicle length, 1000 grains weight, and harvest index, with lesser effective tillers/m 2 were recorded in MTR, compared to CTR and DSR. The soil analysis revealed that, puddling in CTR and MTR, make the soil dense, resulted in increased bulk density by 3.50% from initial soil condition. In contrast, more availability of N, P, K, and improved soil organic carbon (SOC) with unchanged bulk density, directed towards the better soil health in DSR, compared to CTR and MTR. Also, the reduction in total cultivation costs in DSR (∼19%), and in MTR (∼8%) with respective higher benefit cost ratio (B: C) of 1.92 in DSR and 1.77 in MTR, compared to 1.73 in CTR, indicated that mechanized seeding/transplanting are profitable and sustainable rice establishment methods than conventional rice transplanting practice.