Abstract

                                Field experiments were conducted at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore during 1994-95 and 1995-96 to study the influence of water stress and seed hardening and foliar sprays for mitigating the stress at early vegetative phase of semi-dry rice. The study revealed that irrigation to semi-dry rice at 5 cm depth at weekly intervals upto 45 and 60 Days after emergence (DAE) were significantly superior to fortnightly irrigations. Seed hardening with Chamatkar 125 ppm with foliar spray of KCI 0.5% had significant favourable influence to mitigate the stress in the early vegetative phases of semi-dry rice.

Key words : Semi-dry rice, Irrigation, Seed hardening, Foliar spray, Moisture stress