Telangana: SRI helps in reduction of pumping hours and irrigation days

Narayanpet: System of Rice Intensification (SRI), a method under which rice is cultivated using more organic manure and intermittent irrigation, has helped farmers in the district cut down input costs, improve plant growth and water savings, says a study.

The SRI impact assessment was undertaken in 20 project villages in Narayanpet. The villages were pooled under four clusters for which quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out on water usage, input cost, plant growth, gross and net returns of SRI and conventional paddy cultivation separately to arrive at the results.

The study was implemented by the Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR) and it was recently documented in a research paper by Kishan Meesala and Suhitha Rasala of WOTR, Hyderabad unit.
During the assessment, it was observed that SRI farmers had significantly reduced the number of pumping hours and irrigation days compared to conventional paddy farmers.

Narayanpet block comprises 27 villages with a gross cropping area of 167,911 hectares of which the net paddy cropping area is 19,500 hectares during Kharif (Vanakalam) and 10,314 hectares in Rabi (Yasangi).

The assessment also revealed that significant water saving was achieved by SRI farmers, i.e, 8586 cubic metres per hectare under tubewell irrigation over the conventional methods. Further, lower utilisation of water and distance maintained in SRI benefited in reducing the biotic and abiotic stress caused by snails and nutrient deprivation respectively, the study said.

The SRI method also minimised labour deployment. Compared to conventional method that requires 16 people per hectare, under the SRI method, only eight persons per hectare are required, says the study research paper by Kishan Meesala and Suhitha Rasala.

The study further pointed out that in terms of input cost, eight kg of seed was used per hectare under SRI method against the conventional practice which required 62 kg seed per hectare.

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