PERFORMANCE OF DIFFERENT VARIETIES IN DIRECT SEEDED RICE (Oryza sativa L.) AS AFFECTED BY DIFFERENT SOWING METHODS

Field experiments were conducted in DaikU Township of Bago (East) Region and Maubin Township of Ayeyarwaddy Region from November, 2015 to April, 2016 with two objectives: (1) to compare the different sowing methods on performance of tested rice varieties, (2) to investigate the effect of sowing methods on yield and yield components of tested rice varieties in direct seeded summer rice area of Maubin and DaikU Townships. These experiments were laid out in split-plot design with three replications in both sites. Three different rice varieties (Theehtatyin, Yeanelo 4 and Yeanelo1) were assigned in main plot and three different sowing methods (Broadcasting, Line sowing and Drum seeder) were arranged in sub plot. According to the result of the experiments, in DaikU Township, Yeanelo 1 gave the highest grain yield (4.75 t ha-1) with the maximum number of spikelets panicle-1, filled grain percentage, panicle length and harvest index and in Maubin Township, Theehtatyin variety obtained highest grain yield (6.32 t ha-1) with the highest number of panicles m-2 and harvest index among the different rice varieties. And then, Theehtatyin variety showed significantly increases in number of spikelets panicle-1 and filled grain percentage in comparison with the DaikU experiment. Number of spikelets panicle-1 was negatively correlatively with the number of effective panicles m-2 for all tested rice varieties and sowing methods. Regarding the different sowing methods, Drum seeder supported to produce higher grain yield than that of Line sowing and Broadcasting. Although Drum seeder made to produce low panicles numbers m-2, other yield component such as number of spikelets panicle-1 and agronomic characters such as panicle length and harvest index were found to have highest among the tested sowing methods in both locations. Besides, there was no significantly difference in filled grain percentage among the sowing methods. Therefore, it can be concluded that Yeanelo 1 variety for DaikU Township and Theehtatyin variety for Maubin Township should be sown by using Drum seeder methods gave the maximum grain yield with better performance