P. MAHESWARA REDDY*, G. KRISHNA REDDY, B. RAVINDRA REDDY, K.V. NAGAMADHURI, G. PRABHAKAR REDDY AND P. SUDHAKAR

Department of Agronomy, Regional Agricultural Research Station, Tirupati-517502

ABSTRACT

Nursery management experiment was carried out at Regional Agricultural Research Station, Tirupati campus of Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University during rabi, 2014-15 for the standardization of suitable bedding material and foliar nutrition for tray nursery technique in rice for machine transplanting under Mechanized System of Rice Intensification (MSRI). The treatments consists of four bedding materials (soil alone, soil: farm yard manure, soil: vermicompost and soil: pressmud cake in the ratio of 70 : 30) and five foliar applications (control, urea @ 0.5%, DAP @ 0.5%, 19-19-19 @ 0.5% and 13-00-45 @ 0.5%) tested in Randomized Block Design with factorial concept, replicated thrice. The bedding material comprised of soil with press mud cake in 70 : 30 ratio recorded significantly better seedling shoot length, root length, dry matter production and seedling vigour index over soil with farmyard manure and soil alone as bedding materials but, comparable to soil with vermicompost at 13 and 16 DAS and the lowest seedling vigour index was recorded with soil alone as bedding material. Foliar sprays and their interaction with bedding materials recorded non significant differences with respect to growth parameters (seedling shoot length, root length and dry matter production) at 13 and 16 DAS. However, better growth parameters were recorded numerically with the foliar application of urea @ 0.5% as compared to other foliar applications.

KEYWORDS:

MSRI, tray nursery, bedding material, foliar application, seedling growth and seedling vigour