Abstract:
Generally, rice is sown late March-April in high altitudes, early May-June in mid altitudes and
June-early July in low altitudes in Bhutan. Sowing times of rice in Bhutan are often driven by the
monsoon and are frequently delayed with no specific varieties developed for delayed sowing.
Thus, the research was conducted at ARDC-Samtenling research station in 2017 to study effect
of sowing dates on performance of widely adopted Bhur Kambja1 rice variety to identify zonal
specific optimum sowing window. Field experiment was laid out in a randomized complete
block design with three replications having net plot size of 5×2 m. Experiment comprised of five
different sowing dates that are 30th May, 14th June, 29th June, 14th July and 29th July at an interval
of 15 days. Some agronomical traits such as plant height, days to maturity, number of productive
tillers per hill, panicle length at harvest and grain yield were measured and analyzed. The result
indicated that effect of sowing dates on plant height, days to maturity, panicle length and grain
yield were statistically significant at 0.05 probability level while number of productive tillers per
hill showed no significant differences among different dates of sowing. Sowing at 30th May and
14th June resulted significantly higher yield of 3.53 t ha-1
and 3.40 t ha-1
respectively. The findings
revealed that sowings at 29th June, 14th July and 29th July yielded low of 2.37 t ha-1
, 2.97 t ha-1
and 2.83 t ha-1
respectively. This elucidates that late sowing and transplanting cause yield
reduction which could not be recommended among farmers. |
