Abstract

A Field experiment was conducted at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore during Kharif 2008 to evaluate the performance of nursery methods and crop geometry for rice varieties. The experiment was conducted with two nursery methods (mat and conventional nursery) to raise seedling for SRI and two varieties (CORH 3 hybrid and ADT 43 variety) with three square crop geometry viz., 25 x 25 cm, 30 x 30 cm and 35 x 35 cm. Nursery methods and varieties form the main plot treatments and crop geometry were allotted to sub-plots in a split plot design replicated thrice. The results revealed that, the growth and yield of rice varieties not affected by nursery methods. The performance of CORH 3 was superior over ADT 43 as it produced 16.9 per cent higher yield (6516 kg ha -1 versus 5417 kg ha -1 ). Planting the crop with 25 x 25 cm geometry registered higher grain yield in ADT 43 and the CORH 3 performed better with 30 x 30 cm geometry level.

Keywords: cultivars, crop geometry, nursery techniques and SRI.