ABSTRACT

The high production cost and scarcity of water for crop cultivation are
some of the major problems faced by farmers in many rice-based cropping
systems in the country. In many crop production systems, around 15-20 %
of the total costs of production accounts for tillage/land preparation, such
activities also consume around 15 % of the total water requirement.
Hence, it is important to adopt technologies that would save water and
reduce the cost of cultivation without sacrificing the yield. This project
work discusses the comparative advantage of zero-tillage crop
establishments in rice over the traditional transplanted paddy by the
farmers of Ranaghat-I Block in Nadia district. The trial was conducted in 26
different farmers field in clay loam soils in Kharif 2015. Among the
method of cultivation of paddy, application of zero tillage in paddy field
performed the best with respect to growth attributes, yield attributes and
yield of Paddy as compared to transplanted traditional paddy cultivation.
It is observed that in every stage of crop growth shortest plant height
was observed in conventional cultivation plots than the Zero tillage plots.
All the yield attributing characters performed better in zero tillage plots
as compared to conventional cultivation plots. This ultimately contributed
higher crop yield in zero tillage paddy cultivation as compared to
conventional cultivation plots. On an average 4.67% yield increase
observed in Zero tillage plots in paddy cultivation. Due to no seedbed
and transplanting in zero tillage paddy, at
least 60 % of the water
required for land preparation could be saved which is admitted by all
farmers in Ranaghat-I Block. Zero till significantly reduces cost of
production. The yield obtained under zero-tillage is higher than the
conventional paddy cultivation. However, net benefit has been increased
in zero-tillage plots by Rs. 4303 bigha-1 and Rs.32,372 ha-1 due to the
omitting of the tillage operation less labor requirement , low seed rate
and omission of seed bed preparation. Other than the economic
advantage, zero-tillage helps to improve health of soil, nutrients uptake,
pesticide pollutants from place to place. At the same time due to early
crop maturity rabi crop of that area also performed better in due to
timely sowing.
So the experiment show that zero-tillage technology in Paddy at
Ranaghat-I Block of Nadia district
has many advantages over
conventional tillage. Hence, more attention needs to be given to develop
the appropriate machinery to suit zero-tillage conditions and at the same
time, to fine-tune technologies to suit the different cropping systems as
well.
Key words: Zero Tillage, Paddy