EFFECT OF PLANTING METHODS ON YIELD AND YIELD COMPONENTS OF SPRING RICE IN BARDIYA, NEPAL

Most of the farmers are planting rice manually in Nepal due to lack of adequate knowledge and farm equipments. A field experiment was conducted using Hardinath-1 variety of rice during the spring season 2019 to evaluate the effect of planting methods on yield and yield attributes of rice in Bardiya district of Nepal. Four planting methods: manual transplanting, mechanical transplanting, drum seeder seeding and seed drill seeding were replicated five times in randomized complete block design with each plot size of 6m2. The highest plant height was recorded on drum seeder seeding (68.46 cm) followed by mechanical transplanting (66.08 cm) and seed drill method (65.10 cm) but the lowest height was recorded on manual transplanting (60.84 cm). The highest number of effective tiller/m2, panicle length and number of filled grain per panicle was obtained with mechanical transplanting (429.8, 24.82cm, 188.2) followed by drum seeder seeding (351.2, 24.02 cm, 171.6). The sterility percent was found higher at seed drill (22.78%) and drum seeder seeding (20.58%) as compared to mechanical (19.95%) and manual transplanting (18.91%). Thousand grains weight was higher at manual transplanting (22.12g) followed by mechanical transplanting (21.80g). The highest yield was obtained with mechanical transplanting (5.64 mt/ha) followed by drum seeder seeding (4.13mt/ha), whereas the lowest yield was obtained with seed drill (3.25mt.ha) followed by manual transplanting (3.73mt/ha). Therefore, mechanical transplanting could be the appropriate method of rice planting to increase productivity of rice in Nepal.