Rice Ratooning - Kinda Working with Correct Fertiliser But Prone to Fungal Disease
Channel: ScenseMe
Date: 2022-08-25

More post: https://www.scenseme.com/post/rice-ratooning-kinda-working-with-correct-fertiliser-but-prone-to-fungal-disease
Experimented on: 23APRIL2021

Ratooning is the agricultural practice of harvesting a monocot crop like rice by cutting most of the above-ground portion but leaving the roots and the growing shoot apices intact so as to allow the plants to recover and produce a fresh crop in the next season.

Ratoon is a new shoot or sprout springing from the base of a crop plant, especially sugar cane and rice, after cropping

For our rice (MR 297 Shiraj, indica type), at harvest we cut the rice about 30 cm from the ground.  10 days before this took place, we divided the plots to receive various nutrients namely:

Urea (46%N) - 
NPK 15-15-15
NPK 12-6-21
Neem Cake 5-1-1

It did work since lots of panicles came out but the harvest was severely disrupted by the infestation of brown spots disease (by  fungus Cochliobolus miyabeanu ) and rice bugs feeding on the grains.

We recorded
Control (no fertilizer) = 11 tillers while both NPK resulted in 14 panicles (+27% increase)

In short, ratooning practice in rice even though only takes ~40% of the time of the main harvest (around 120 days), would still be able to give ~30-40% yield compared to the main harvest with minimum labor and fertilizer input.

But, pest and disease is the main culprit here. I suggest silica spray or anything to ward off fungus since the leaves in our plot did not get severely bitten or damaged.  

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction of the rice plot
00:25 Explaining the treatments
00:52 Rice panicle
01:24 Urea treatment
01:56 NPK green treatment
02:48 High K fertiliser treatment

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