THE recent widespread pre-monsoon rain across many parts of the country is expected to help the forthcoming kharif rice sowing, a top agricultural scientist with Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI) has said.
TK Adhya said the showers would help prevent aridity before the onset of the southwest monsoon, expected to set in over the next few weeks. ?Following the recent showers, farmers using direct seeding technique would start preparing land for the monsoon showers while for the rest of the farmers it would help in improving soil moisture,? Adhya, director, CRRI, a Cuttack-based premier institute under the Indian Council for Agricultural Research, told FE.
In traditional rice cultivation systems, rice is sprouted in a nursery and the seedlings are then transplanted into standing water in the paddy field. With direct seeding, rice seed is sown and sprouted directly in the field, eliminating the process of transplanting the seedlings by hand and greatly reducing the crop?s water requirements.
With the India Meteorological Department predicting a normal monsoon, the government is targeting a record rice production in excess of 100 million tonne. Last year, due to widespread rainfall, the area under rice cultivation had increased to more than 31 million hectares from around 29.3 million hectares in the previous year.
Due to a normal monsoon last year, the country’s rice production went up to 94.11 million tonne during 2010-11 against 89.09 million tonne in the previous year. Due to the failure of the monsoon in 2009-10, paddy production had declined by around 14%. According to the ministry of agriculture, in 2008-09 India produced 99.18 million tonne of rice.
?Kharif sowing of paddy would start after the southwest monsoon rain, which is usually spread across the month of June,? an agriculture ministry official said.
The traditional rice growing states of eastern India constitute Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and eastern parts of Uttar Pradesh, which account for 61% of the total rice area and 51% of total rice production in the country. A major portion of the rice growing area is rainfed.
Meanwhile the agriculture ministry has proposed a R160 hike in the minimum support price (MSP) for paddy (common variety) to R1,160 per quintal for the 2011-12 crop year (July-June), against R1,000 a quintal in 2010-11.
The cabinet is expected to announce the MSP for paddy shortly.