Root Growth, Nutrient Uptake and Yield of Medicinal Rice Njavara under Different Establishment Techniques and Nutrient Sources

Copyright © 2013 S. Rani, P. Sukumari. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Field experiments with medicinal rice Njavara were conducted at Cropping Systems Research Centre, Karamana, Thi-ruvananthapuram, Kerala during summer of 2007 and 2008. The experimental design was split plot with three replica-tions. The treatments consisted of four establishment techniques viz., System of Rice Intensification SRI (M1), Inte-grated Crop Establishment Method (ICM) (M2), Package of practices (PoP) (M3) of Kerala Agricultural University and Conventional Management Practices (CMP) (M4) in main plot. Three nutrient sources viz., (1) organic, 2) integrated use of organic and inorganic, 3) chemical fertilizers only) were used under different establishment techniques. Root dry matter production was determined at weekly intervals and plant nutrients uptake was determined by calculating from the product of dry matter, straw dry weight, grain yield and percentage of nutrients. Results revealed that at early stages (4- 6 WAT/WAS) (Weeks after transplanting/Weeks after sowing), root dry matter production hill−1 was in the order of SRI> ICM> CMP> PoP which changed to SRI> ICM> PoP> CMP from 7th week onwards. Maximum root dry mat-ter (at 9th WAS/WAT) was recorded in SRI (0.51/0.50 g·hill−1 in 2007/2008). The total nutrients uptake (N, P, K, Fe, Mn and Zn) in conventional management practices was significantly higher than other establishment techniques