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DIRECT SEEDING

Direct seeding in watered field

• Land preparation - The land is prepared wet.
• Puddling - several ploughing and laddering in standing water. The land may be impounded with rain or irrigated water.
• Incorporation of weeds into the soil and allowed to decompose for almost 3 weeks.
• The mud in the field is then leveled for seeding.
• Drainout excess water
• Pre-germinated seed with radicle length of 1 to 2 mm long is broadcast by hand 
• Seed rate - 90 to 100 kg/ha.

Disadvantages:

(a) Seeds are exposed to rat and bird attacks

(b) Seeds are carried or washed away during heavy rains resulting in poor seedling stand.

 

Use of Drum seeder

• Requires less number of labourers
• Suitable to sow the pre-germinated paddy seeds directly in wetland.
• Before using this seeder, the land has to be ploughed, puddle and levelled properly and left for 2 days.  Immediate use of this seeder after puddling is discouraged since pulling the seeder will be difficult.

Paddy drum seeder

Advantages of direct seeding are:

• Lower labour cost
• Seed bed preparation, care of seedlings in the seed bed and pulling of seedling as required in transplanting operations can be eliminated
• Crop matures 7 to 10 days - earlier than transplanted crop this may be adjusted for multiple cropping.

Disadvantages of direct seeding are:

• After sowing, the seeds are exposed in the field - bird or rat attack which may cause poor establishment.
• In the broadcast fields, the crop seedlings and the weeds start growing together and the more hardy weeds arrest the growth of crops markedly. Weeding is a great troublesome and costly affair in direct seeding parti­cularly in broadcast crop.
• Direct seeded crop has a greater tendency to lodge than the transplanted one as the root anchorage and develop­ment become poor in direct seeded crop.