System of Rice Intensification (SRI)

System of Rice Intensification (SRI)

About SRI technique :

• The System of Rice Intensification(SRI) is a farming methodology aimed at increasing the yield of rice produced in farming.
• It is a low-water, labor-intensive method that uses younger seedlings singly spaced and typically hand weeded with special tools.
• The System of Rice Intensification involves cultivating rice with as much organic manure as possible, starting with young seedlings planted singly at wider spacing in a square pattern.

• It involves intermittent irrigation that keeps the soil moist but not inundated, and frequent inter cultivation with weeder that actively aerates the soil.
• SRI is not a standardised, fixed technological method.
• It is rather a set of ideas, a methodology for comprehensively managing and conserving resources by changing the way that land, seeds, water, nutrients, and human labour are used to increase productivity from a small but well-tended number of seeds.

A comparison of SRI and conventional method of rice cultivation is as follows :

SRI is initially labour intensive :

• Needs 50% more man-days for transplanting and weeding.
• Mobilises labour to work for profit.
• It offers an alternative to the resource poor, who put in their family labour.
• Once the right skills are learnt and implemented, the labour costs will be lesser.

SRI encourages rice plant to grow healthy with :

• Large root volume
• Profuse and strong tillers – Maximum tillering (30 tillers/plant can be easily achieved; 50 tillers per plant are quite attainable) occurs concurrently with panicle initiation.
• Under excellent management even 100 fertile tillers per plant or even more can be achieved due to early transplanting and absence of die back of roots.
• Non lodging
• Big panicles
• More and well filled grain panicles and higher grain weight
• Resists insects because it allows rice to absorb soil nutrients naturally

Syllabus : Prelims + Mains; GS3 – Agriculture