The Tamil Nadu Rice Research Institute, Aduthurai, has urged farmers to use the zero tillage planting machine for sowing seeds of rice fallow crops.
The machine is being used by farmers in northern States for sowing rice and wheat fallow crops for the past four decades, said Assistant Professor of Agronomy, S.Elamathi, at a field demonstration of this machine held at the institute’s research farm at Aduthurai on Saturday.
The machine would be ideal for sowing rice fallow crops in delta districts as well as in other districts, said Dr.Elamathi who presented a brief note on crop production methods of rice fallow pulse crops.
Inaugurating the field demonstration, the TRRI director, V.Ambethgar, stressed the need for adopting mechanised sowing of pulses in delta districts in view of the labour shortage.
Narrating the bottlenecks in the existing practice for broadcasting black gram seeds in the standing crop just seven or 10 days before the harvesting samba paddy, Dr.Ambethgar urged farmers to use the ZTPM since it helps maintain crop population, a key factor for higher yield in pulses.
While the use and advantages of using ZTPM was highlighted by senior scientist R.Senthil Kumar, a brief note on the available high yielding varieties of pulses and weeding practices in pulses production were presented by the Associate Professors, R.Manimaran, and Uma Maheswari, respectively.
Principal Scientist, Coimbatore Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, M.Muthamil Selvan said the machine was capable of sowing in desired levels of row spacing, intra-row spacing and depth of sowing.
