PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF BIO PRIMING FOR UPLAND DIRECT SEEDED RICE IN ORGANIC CONDITION
Loading...
Date
2017-07
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AAU, Jorhat
Abstract
Rice is the world’s most important crop and is a staple food for more than half of the world’s population. Worldwide, rice is grown on 161 million hectares, with an annual production of about 744.4 million tons of paddy (FAO, 2014). Rice production and consumption in India have increased during the last quarter of century. In the last two decades, seed priming an effective seed invigoration method has become a common seed treatment to increase the rate and uniformity of emergence and crop establishment in most crops. Bio-priming is a process of biological seed treatment that refers to the combination of seed priming and inoculation of seed with beneficial organism to protect seed and improve the quality. Experimental findings revealed that field emergence percentage significantly varied in response to seed treatment with different bio agents and highest field emergence was observed in T7 (hydration) and least was observed in (T8) control. Effect of seed treatment was non-significant for seedling/m2, but it shows significant variation in growth parameters like seedling height and seedling biomass. Among the vigour indicators root length and shoot length varied significantly in response to different treatments. Plant growth response was found to be non-significant for different seed treatment except total biomass production which varied significantly among the treatments. The total biomass production was found to be higher in treatment with consortium (T6) and Bacillus cereus (T4) .Total biomass production was found to be significantly higher in treatments with 10% reduced seed rate. All the recorded yield and yield attributes were found to be non-responsive to seed priming with bio agents except harvest index. Highest harvest index was observed in treatment (T2) T. harzianum followed by (T8) control and (T7) hydration. The treatment effects of reduced seed rate (10 %) were found to be at par with normal seed rate, it may be because of less competition for inputs in the early vegetative stage. Weed density is found to be affected by the treatment variation at early stage. The highest weed density was observed in treatment T8 (control) and least was observed in treatment T4 (Bacillus cereus) .The laboratory test indicates high positive correlation between field emergence and few vigour indicators viz seed vigour index I, seed vigour index II and seedling dry weight. The present study of seed treatment has significant positive effect on field emergence, hence can be successfully employed for better field emergence in organic condition.