Comparison of Growth and yield of dry seeded rice (Oryza sativa L.) in natural and conventional farming systems

Abstract

The application of chemical fertilizers is costly and gradually lead to the environmental problems. Natural farming is becoming an increasingly important aspect of environmentally sound sustainable agriculture. In this regard, an experiment was conducted during Maha season in 2014 from November to February at Vaharai DS Division, Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. The experiment consisted of two farming systems; natural farming and conventional farming and was laid out in a Randomized Complete Block Design with twelve replications. All the crop management practices from land preparation to harvesting were done for each farming systems separately. Bg 352 rice variety was used for the experiment. Growth parameters and yield parameters were taken at fourteen weeks after sowing by destructive random sampling method. The results revealed that natural farming system significantly (p<0.05) increased the tested parameters such as plant height, total number of tillers, total number of productive tillers, total leaf area per plant, root length, dry weight of root, Panicle length, total number of spikelets per panicle, number of filled spikelets per panicle, hundred grain weight along with yield over conventional farming system. Further, economic analysis of the data presented in this study showed that natural farming method for rice cultivation is the most economical and attractive option for farming community. The high yield grain and less cost of production per hectare were noted in natural farms (B/C= 4.82) as compared with conventional farms (B/C=2.39). Therefore, it could be concluded that the adoption of natural farming technology improves rice farmer’s profit along with livelihood and this eventually reduces poverty through environmental friendly way.