Context: Due to shortage of labourers in Punjab and Haryana, farmers are now being encouraged to adopt ‘direct seeding of rice’ (DSR) in place of conventional transplanting.
Key Points

• The two granary states of Punjab and Haryana could face a shortage of an estimated 10 lakh labourers, due to lockdown.
• The labourers are mainly seasonal migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh who undertake transplantation of paddy in the kharif season.
• The farmers are now being encouraged to adopt ‘direct seeding of rice’ (DSR) in place of conventional transplanting.
• In wake of this pandemic, the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) in Ludhiana has developed a ‘Lucky Seed Drill’ that can both sow seeds and simultaneously spray herbicides to control weeds.

About Conventional/Traditional transplanting

• Under this the farmers prepare nurseries where the paddy seeds are first sown and raised into young Plants.
• These seedlings are then uprooted and replanted 25-35 days later in the main field.
• It is transplanted on fields that are “puddled” or tilled in standing water using tractor-drawn disc harrows
• The nursery seed bed is 5-10% of the area to be transplanted.
• Paddy seedlings are transplanted on fields that are tilled in standing water using tractor-drawn disc harrows.
• For the first three weeks or so after transplanting, the plants have to be irrigated almost daily (if there are no rains) to maintain a water depth of 4-5 cm.
• Farmers continue irrigating every 2-3 days even for the next 4-5 weeks, when the crop is in the tillering (stem development) stage.

About Direct Seeding of Rice (DSR)

• In DSR, the pre-germinated seeds are directly drilled into the field by a tractor-powered machine. There is no nursery preparation or transplantation involved in this method.
• Farmers have to only level their land and give one pre-sowing irrigation.
• Conventionally the water act as a herbicide for paddy but in DSR, water is replaced by real chemical herbicides. Farmers have to only level their land and give one pre-sowing irrigation or rauni.
• Once the field has good soil moisture, they need to do two rounds of ploughing and planking (smoothening of soil surface), which is followed by the sowing of the seeds and spraying of herbicides.

Advantages of DSR

• The most important one is water savings. The first irrigation (apart from the pre-sowing rauni) under DSR is necessary only 21 days after sowing.
• It is unlike in transplanted paddy, where watering has to be done practically daily to ensure submerged/flooded conditions in the first three weeks.
• It saves more number of working labours, which about three labourers are required to transplant one acre of paddy at almost Rs 2,400 Per Acre.
• Here, the cost of herbicides under DSR will not exceed Rs 2,000 per acre.

Disadvantages of DSR

• The main issue is the Availability of Herbicides.
• The seed requirement for DSR is also higher, at 8-10 kg/acre, compared to 4-5 kg in Transplanting.
• The laser land levelling, which costs Rs 1,000/acre, is compulsory in DSR. This is not so in Transplanting.
• Here, the yields are as good as from normal transplanting, but one need to sow by the first fortnight of June. The plants have to come out properly before the Monsoon Rains Arrive.
• In Transplanting there is no such problem, where the saplings have already been raised in the Nursery.