Abstract

The Coimbatore Agricultural Institue had recently the privilege of hearing, under the auspices of the Students' Club on the 25th August, a lecture on Rice Production in Japan by Dr. Shingo Mitsui, Professor of Plant Nutrition, in the Tokyo University. The lecture was a model of brevity, clarity and completeness and it reviewed in a masterly manner how Japan, in the course of the last sixty years, succeeded in doubling her rice production, from 4-5 million to 9-5 million tons at present. This achievement was possible, first by a widespread system of mass education, coupled with a high level of scientific training to the gifted few, next by a systematic and steady progress in improving the methods of rice culture, including fertilisers, and thirdly by a systematic development of the fertiliser industry by which organic manure like compost, soybean cake and green manures, were replaced by heavy dosages of inorganic fertilisers like ammonium sulphate, and superphosphate. A fourth reason was the thoroughness with which the results of research were made available to the farmers, by an efficient and widespread extension service. For instance, more than 90 per cent of the rice varieties grown by the average Japanese farmer, were improved seeds. Rice varieties that showed definite responses to fertiliser applications, that were more resistant to insect and disease attack, and those that were more tolerent to cold, have been systema- tically tested over many years and systematically distributed to the farmers. Even in the northern-most parts of Japan, where the winter temperatures fall below 30° C, they could grow rice during the summer months, by using the cold-tolerant varieties,

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