Abstract

Rice is the staple food of one-third of world population and the productivity needs to increase to feed the growing population with efficient water management practices and water saving technologies. In this regard, a field experiment was conducted in South Odisha during summer of 2018–19 which was laid out in split-plot design with three replications. The treatments were comprised of three water regimes in main plot viz., continuous ponding, continuous soil saturation and saturation after hair crack and four transplanting dates in sub plots, namely, transplanting on January 23 and 31, February 6 and 13. The continuous ponding recorded the maximum yield attributes like panicle length (20.04 cm), 1000 grain weight (23.46g), filled grains/panicle (73.90) along with grain yield (4.57 t/ha), net return (Rs. 50228/ha) and B:C ratio (1.07). Transplanting of rice on 23rd January resulted in increase in number of effective tillers (8.29), 1000 grain weight (23.46 g), filled grains/panicle (72.54), grain yield (4.72 t/ha), net return (Rs. 54385/ha) and B:C ratio (1.19) over other dates of transplanting. The study clearly revealed that continuous ponding and saturation exerted higher productivity when transplanted on January 23 under South Odisha conditions.