Grain Yield Comparison Between Direct-Seeded and Transplanted Rice in Long Duration Rice

Rice is traditionally grown under puddled transplanted rice (TP) conditions, which is not only intensive for more water usage but also labor resources and cost-effective. However, due to climate change, water shortage for rice farming is becoming a problem, likely affecting more than 20 million hectares of rice-growing areas in South and Southeast Asia. Direct-seeded rice (DSR) is now becoming popular as an alternative seedling establishment method of planting due to its low requirement for both water and labor. However, identifying highyielding rice varieties and comparing TP and DSR ecosystems provide useful information to reduce cost and time, which can be fit in better options for different cropping systems. In this poster, I will discuss how in the long duration rice crop we adopted DSR as a testing system to identify the high-yielding rice germplasm that will grow well under the DSR planting. In this work, I will describe the robust analytical approaches, yield comparison between DSR and TP, and correlation between the two methods from the last three seasons. The mean grain yield under TP is higher, with a percent difference of 26% in grain yield over DSR and also found a significant correlation between the two different ecosystems. Therefore, by overcoming these constraints in TP, DSR can prove to be a promising, technically and economically feasible alternative solution for shifting to DSR.