Energy Assessment of Manual Transplanting Rice and Dry Direct Seeding Rice Production Systems in Combined Nalgonda District, Telangana

Rice is the major crop in India in terms of area, production and consumption. Rice occupies about 23% of the gross cropped area and 35% of the total area under food grains in the country. Rice is of one key importance to the economy as well as a staple food for Telangana people, requiring about 50 lakh tons annually to feed the state population. In recent times the area under rice cultivation has been increased and is expected to hit the one crore acre mark by rabi season 2022. In any type of crop production system an accountability of inputs, energy spent, yield and costs must be monitored, by that one can modify it or substitute it for obtaining the better results.

Due to decline in the share of agriculture workers in the country, there is a need to adopt new technologies in rice cultivation. Dry direct seeding of rice refers to direct sowing of rice seeds in the dry field rather than by transplanting seedlings from the nursery. A study was conducted to compute the inputs and energy consumptions in manual transplanted rice production (MTR) and dry direct seeding rice production (DDSR) methods of paddy cultivation in the combined Nalgonda district of Telangana State, during 2020-21. Firstly, the different operations performed in these two methods were listed out, then by using suitable energy equivalents total energy consumed in two methods of operations were calculated.

The human energy spent in the manual transplanted rice production and dry direct seeded rice productions were 506 and 92.84 MJ/ha respectively. Specific energy noted for dry direct seeded rice production and manual transplanted rice productions were 2.10 and 2.28 MJ/kg respectively. A total saving of Rs. 16,000/- ha^-1 was recorded by practicing the dry direct seeded rice production method over the manual transplanted rice production method. On comparing both the methods for overall energy consumption, manual energy consumption and cost of cultivation DDSR method was found to be more efficient than MTR method in the district.