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ABSTRACT

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the predominant kharif (rainy season) crop in India. The eastern parts of the country comprise majority of the acreage under rice, where substantial area remains vacant after harvest of rice crop during rabi season (winter), alternatively known as rice-fallows. These areas are threatened by different bottlenecks such as soil moisture deficit, unsuitable cultivars, poor quality of seeds, improper management practices, etc. Still, it carries a huge potential to contribute to the national food security by intensifying the existing cropping systems through inclusion of different rabi pulses like lentil, chickpea, lathyrus, etc. and oilseeds like mustard, safflower, linseed, etc. Proper agronomic management of these short duration crops with water efficient practices can surely boost the production and economic returns from these rice-fallows.

Keywords: soil moisture stress, sequential crops, seed priming, food security

 

Rice is one of the premier food grain crops grown in India as a kharif crop covering an area of 43.79million hectares (Mha) and contributing a large share of 116.42 million tonnes (MT) into the national food basket (ICAR, 2020). But, after the harvesting of kharif rice, majority of the fields remains vacant during subsequent rabi season due to various factors like late harvesting of paddy crops, early withdrawal of monsoon making the field inefficient to take up the subsequent rabi crops, lack of proper irrigation sources, grazing and to some extent due to improper drainage. These vacant fields are nothing but the rice-fallows which carries a huge prospective within it. It has been revealed that about 22.3 Mha of potential rice fallow areas exist in the South Asia, with 88.3% shared by India, 8.7% by Bangladesh, 1.4% by Nepal, 1.1% by Sri Lanka and 0.5% by Pakistan (Gumma et al., 2016).

Rice-fallows are nothing but the rice mono cropping system sharing about 11.7 Mha in India, out of which about 82% is concentrated in the eastern part of India including states like Odisha, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Jharkhand and parts of Uttar Pradesh and Assam as given in figure 2. So utilization of the rice-fallows to its full potential becomes the need of the hours to meet out the food demand of such burgeoning population.

Despite of the enormous scope, the cultivation of either oilseeds and pulses or both in the widespread rice fallow areas is mostly limited by numerous biotic and/or abiotic and socio-economic constraints, which are summarized under the following heads (Figure3).

 Through the proper analysis of the rice-fallows according to its suitability and potentiality, and with suitable planning, proper execution and expansion efforts, these areas can be brought under double cropping system through efficient use of the residual soil moisture. After the harvesting of paddy, the climatic conditions in these areas (rice-fallows areas) remain very much conducive for planting various short duration (2-3 months) crops like lathyrus, linseed, lentil, chickpea, mustard and safflower. Although some parts of eastern India do take up pulses as conventional crops following the kharif paddy, but that could not be popularized among the farmers due to lack of proper plant stand. These problems can be nullified by following proper site-specific guidelines in the rice-fallows.

Guidelines for crops to be grown in rice-fallows

·   Planting of pulses just before harvest of rice (4-6 days prior) to lessen the damage to pulse seedling during harvesting of rice.

·   Mainly the paira/utera method of cropping is being followed where the water soaked seeds are being broadcasted in the standing rice crops one or two weeks before its harvesting which facilitates better utilization of residual soil moisture. Others sowing methods like drilling or dibbling along with the surface crop residues in the field requires sophisticated seed drill or sowing equipments and these potential fields are need to be intervened.

·   Priming of seed is very crucial to boost the plant vigour and development and is generally done by soaking seeds with chemical like potassium di-hydrogen phosphate, micro-nutrient solutions, ash or may be with normal water for one hour to several hours.

·   Seed treatment with corresponding suitable strains of bio-fertilizers like Rhizobium and Phosphate solubilizing/mobilizing bacteria to augment nodulation and nutrient extraction from soil. In general, Rhizobium culture @ 10-20 g/ kg of seed is treated by different methods like mixing with jaggery or making liquid suspension. Appropriate strains of Rhizobium is to be treated to specific compatible crops for e.g. chickpea-Rhizobium ciceri, lentil- Rhizobium leguminosarum, dry bean- Rhizobium phaseoli etc.

·   Harvesting of rice keeping 20-30 cm stubble above ground to curtail the loss of soil moisture through evaporation and maintain or improve the soil physio-bio-chemical properties.

·   Foliar fertilization of nutrients during the critical crop growth period(s) with 2% urea or di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) solutions and micronutrients like Zn through ZnSO₄ @ 0.5%. Foliar feeding highly beneficial because the accelerated rate of nutrient availability and reduced requirement of fertilizer material due to lesser extent of losses.

·   Keeping an eye on the paradigm shift, new vistas of rice growing systems like direct-seeded rice (DSR) and/or aerobic rice in unpuddled conditions can be encouraged based on climatic features and soil conditions (Padhan et al., 2021).

·   As the rice-fallows is also very much susceptible to vigorous weed growth and rice ratoons, specific weed control measures like application of early post-emergence herbicides like quizalofop-ethyl @ 100 g a.i./ha can be applied after 5-7 days after sowing (DAS) along with hand weeding at 30-35DAS depending upon the severity of infestation. Also non-ratooning rice variety like IET 4786 should be preferred.

·   Irrigation is not generally given to the 2^nd crop after rice as they treat these crops in a marginal way. But, if irrigation is available, 1 to 2 irrigations at sensitive growth stages like pod filling or before flowering stage is highly beneficial. Flooded conditions must be discouraged in the pulse field by providing adequate drainage facilities.

 

Table 1. Potential crop varieties suitable for rice-fallows

Source: Ghosh et al., 2016; Singh et al., 2017

Although the rice-fallows have certain hindrance for successful crop production but still proper management practices can take care of all these obstacles. If all possible best management practices are adopted for the sequential crop after rice and about 50% of the area under rice fallow i.e.~5.9 Mha is intensified with different pulses with an average productivity of ~0.7 t/ha, would add ~4.13 MT to pulse kitty; a definite step towards achieving country’s pulse sufficiency.

References

Annual Report, DPD. (2016-17). Government of India, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (Department of Agriculture, Cooperation & Farmers Welfare) Directorate of Pulses Development, Vindhyachal Bhavan, DPD/Pub/TR/19/2016- 17, 46–47.

Ghosh, P. K., Hazra. K. K., Nath, C. P., Das, A. & Acharya, C. L. (2016). Scope, constraints and challenges of intensifying rice (Oryza sativa) fallows through pulses. Indian Journal of Agronomy, 61 (4th IAC Special Issue), 122–128.

Gumma, M. K., Thenkabail, P. S., Teluguntla, P., Rao, M. N., Mohammed, I. A. & Whitbread, A. M. (2016). Mapping rice-fallows cropland areas for short-season grain legumes intensification in South Asia using MODIS 250 m time-series data. International Journal of Digital Earth, 9(10), 981–1003.

ICAR. (2020). Data Book by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi, India.

Padhan, S. R., Rathore, S. S., Prasad, S. M., Singh, R. K. & Shekhawat, K. 2021. Influence of nutrient and weed management on weed dynamics and productivity of upland rice (Oryza sativa). Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences, 91(7), 1100–1102.

Singh, S. S., Kumar, N., Praharaj, C. S. & Singh, N. P. (2017). Agro-technologies for enhancing pulses production in rice-fallows. ICAR-Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh 208024 (India). 36 pp.

 

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11. Rice-fallows potential areas to augment the national food basket_compressed.pdf