‘Aerobic’ rice cultivation

GS 3: Cropping Patterns 

Contents

  • ‘Aerobic’ rice cultivation
  • Aerobic cultivation
  • Water consumption by conventional rice crop
  • Advantages of Aerobic rice cultivation
  • Aerobic rice cultivation reduces water use
  • Reduced labour
  • Reasonable yield
  • Environment
  • Suitable areas
  • Disadvantages
  • Related organizations and their locations (Important for PRELIMS)
  • QUESTION

‘Aerobic’ rice cultivation

Aerobic cultivation

  • Rice is cultivated as direct sown in non-puddle aerobic soil (no transplantation like in conventional practices).
  • Irrigation and fertiliser usage needs to be well managed.
  • Suitable high yielding rice varieties are must.
  • Throughout the growing season, aerobic rice field is kept under unsaturated condition and field is irrigated by surface or sprinkler system to keep soil wet.


Water consumption by conventional rice crop

  • Conventional method consumes nearly 7,000 liters of water for producing one kg of rice (5,000 liters for producing + 2,000 titres lost due to flooding and seepage losses).
  • But actual requirement should have been near 3,000 liters [4000 liter wastage due to unscientific methods and poor land management].

Advantages of Aerobic rice cultivation

Aerobic rice cultivation reduces water use

  • In simple words, rice plant can be grown as an irrigated crop like cultivating maize and wheat in aerobic condition (oxygen is plenty in soil).

Reduced labour

  • Involves mechanized way of sowing with no puddling, transplanting and not need of frequent irrigation, which reduce labour usage more than 50 per cent.

Reasonable yield

  • The yield of aerobic rice, if managed well is comparable with transplanted rice and it has been reported from several countries.

Environment

  • In environmental point of view, emission of methane is lower substantially in aerobic rice.

Suitable areas

  • The suitable areas for aerobic rice cultivation includes irrigated lowlands, where rainfall is insufficient, delta regions where there is delay in water release from reservoir, irrigated system of rice cultivation, where pumping from deep bore well has become expensive.
  • Accordingly, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, parts of Bihar, Odisha, Karnataka, and eastern Uttar Pradesh are the projected areas.

Disadvantages

  • Aerobic rice cultivation needs suitable rice varieties having the characteristics of both upland and high yielding lowland varieties to get good yield.
  • Increased weed growth, poor crop stand, high percentage of sterility and root-knot nematode infestation.
  • High infiltration rate of water and imbalanced availability of nitrogen makes the aerobic soil further ailing for micronutrients (iron and zinc) and rise in nematode population.

Related organizations and their locations (Important for PRELIMS)

  1. International Rice Research Institute (IRRI): Manila, Philippines
  2. National Rice Research Institute (NRRI) (formerly Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI)): Cuttack, situated in Odisha.

Question

Which of the following statements are false?

  1. International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is located in Manila, Philippines
  2. National Rice Research Institute is located in Cuttack, situated in Kerala.
  3. Aerobic rice cultivation is the most conventional form of rice cultivation in India.
  4. Iron and potassium are exmples of micronutrients.
  5. NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potash (Potassium)) are generally used in the ratio 3:1:2.
  6. NPK are micronutrients.

Options
a) All
b) 2, 3, 5 and 6 only
c) 2, 3, 4 and 6  only
d) 3, 4 and 6 only

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