IDENTIFICATION OF PUDDLING SETTLING PERIOD OF VARIOUS SOIL TEXTURE FOR MECHANICAL RICE TRANSPLANTING

Abstract

Primary satisfaction in seedling transplanting is a successful procedure of transplanting with mechanical rice transplanter. For rice cultivation puddling is generally done for a better transplanting. The study was conducted to characterize the optimum puddling settling period for various soil texture. The plots were prepared by following all the possible operations to provide a favorable field condition. Each plot was transplanted at eight different times for settling period of four to thirty two hours in clay, sand and silt textured soil. Primarily 76 hills in each plot, average planting depth 6 cm and seedlings density was found seven from each field. The transplanting performance character was found in different values. It was observed that percentage of missing, damage, floating hills were 9.87%, 19.07% and 10.53% respectively as the maximum values in clay soil at four hours of settling period. With the passes of time this percentages of losses were decreased and mostly sandy soil gave the lowest percentage of losses. In sandy soil the lowest percentage of missing hills was observed 1.32% in eight hours of settling period. Again the lowest percentage of damaged hills were found 2.63% in sandy soil and 1.32% of floating hills was found in clay, sand and silt texture at thirty two hours of settling period. It is concluded that in clay soil transplanting is suitable after a few hours of land preparation and in sandy soil transplanting can be done at any time after land preparation.  With the increase in settling period the losses were decreased and planting efficiency was increased. The highest percentage of planting efficiency was found in sandy soil (94.08%) in eight hours of settling period and the lowest was found in clay soil (60.52%) in four fours of settling period. In this experiment silt soil approximately was good for transplanting. For selected soil texture, at the beginning settling period highest loss was observed which reduced planting efficiency. Finally this experiment showed the rate of losses for various settling period which have positive impact on yield.