Assessment of Seedling Rate per Hill for Irrigated Rice in a Wet Sub-Tropical Condition of Bhutan

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted at the research farm of the Agriculture Research and Development Centre (ARDC) Samtenling in Sarpang district of Bhutan in 2020 to assess the effects of transplanting different numbers of seedlings per hill on grain yield and yield components of rice under irrigated conditions. A widely adopted rice variety, Bhur Kambja-1, was used for the study with one to seven seedlings per hill transplanted at 20×20 cm spacing. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replications. The results of the experiment revealed that the number of seedlings per hill had a significant effect on number of tillers per hill and grain yield. In terms of rice grain yield, a significant difference was observed only between three and seven seedlings per hill with a recorded yield of 3.9 and 2.7 t ha-1, respectively. However, no significant effect was established on other yield components, such as the plant height, panicle length, number of grains per panicle, and unfilled grains per panicle. Therefore, this study recommends transplanting three seedlings hill-1 for cultivation of Bhur Kambja-1 rice variety in the wet-subtropical condition of Bhutan as three seedlings per hill yielded significantly higher productivity and could potentially reduce the seed rate.