Performance of Drought Tolerant Rice Varieties in Malkangiri District of South Eastern Ghat Zone of Odisha

Drought is the major problem in India and occurrence at the time of critical growth stages, reduce crop yield significantly. The National Rice Research Institute, Cuttak, Odisha has developed so many drought tolerance rice varieties to reduce the economic loss due to drought. Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Malkangiri introduced NRRI released two rice varieties i.e. Sahbhagi Dhan and Satyabhama at framers' field to evaluate the performance of these drought tolerant varieties in South Eastern Ghat Zone of Odisha. The highest plant height was observed with the rice variety Satyabhama (104.1 cm). But, overall performance of Sahbhagi Dhan was better as compare to Satyabhama and local check verity (Khandagiri). Sahbhagi Dhan gave highest yield of 36.5 q/ ha, which was statistically differed from others. Correlations study for Sahbhagi Dhan was assessed and observed the positive correlation for grain yield with all studied characters except plant height. For economic point of view, Sahbhagi Dhan recorded highest net return of Rs.19, 925/per ha along with B:C ratio of 1.6 as compared to the rest two varieties. Current Agriculture Research Journal www.agriculturejournal.org ISSN: 2347-4688, Vol. 8, No.(2) 2020, pg. 157-162 CONTACT A. K. Rai anujrai62@gmail.com Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Malkangiri, OUAT, Odisha, Bhubaneswar, India. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Enviro Research Publishers. This is an Open Access article licensed under a Creative Commons license: Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY). Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.12944/CARJ.8.2.12 Article History Received: 29 April 2020 Accepted: 20 July 2020


Introduction
India produces a variety of large crops, within that rice is most important that's feed more than 60% of the population. The country's total rice cultivated area is 43.86 million ha with production of 104.80 million tonnes and productivity of 3.77 t/ha 1 . In Odisha, 69% cultivated area is under rice and occupied 63% of total area under food grains production. 2 Economy of Odisha mainly depends on rice production as it is the main food in this state. The total rice cultivated area of Malkangiri district of Odisha is 142740 ha and it was occupied more than 50% cultivated area and within that upland area is 29%, medium land 40% and low land is 31%. 3 Droughts and submergence are the most important phenomenon for rice production. About 40% of total rice cultivated area in India is rainfed 4 ; hence crop suffered a lot for occurrence of drought. Droughts and floods are the common incident in Odisha. During 2011, it was estimated that about 0.8-0.10 million hectares area of cultivated rice in rainfed condition was experienced drought stress in Odisha. 5 Drought during critical stages in the rice growth cycle reduces available moisture for crop growth and ultimately there is a drastic reduction in yield. Rainfall in Malkangiri district is sufficient (Average-1668 mm) but dry spell during critical crop growth stages drastically reduces productivity of rice.
The lost of rice production during drought years in eastern India is estimated to be 36% of the total rice production6. For that reason, development of drought tolerant or less water requirement rice varieties is measured one of the most efficient and cheapest techniques for food safety.
To evaluate performance of drought tolerant rice varieties in South Eastern Ghat Zone of Odisha, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Malkangiri carry out an onfarm trial (OFT) with improved rice varieties viz., Sahbhagi Dhan and Satyabhama against locally cultivated short duration variety Khandagiri.

Materials and Methods
The Malkangiri district comprises of seven community blocks i.e. Malkangiri, Korkunda, Mathili, Kalimela, Khairput, K. Guma and Podia and among that, Malkangiri block was chosen for conducting On-Farm Trial (OFT). Three villages were selected based on first round study where farmers were cultivating old variety (Khandagiri) in their rice based cropping system in Malkangiri block. Total seven growers were selected in three villages. Kharif 2015, on farm testing conducted in different location (three) of Malkangiri block. For this, three technical options were presented on the way to the field trial and important inputs, such as seeds of rice varieties viz., Sahbhagi Dhan and Satyabhama were given to the chosen growers. On Farm Trials conducted in 2.0 ha area. The initial soil properties in three different locations ranged between 0.45-0.55% organic C, 190-220kg/ha available N, 38-60 kg/ha available P 2 O 5 , 95-105 kg/ha available K 2 O and soil pH 5.5-6.0. In all places, rice was sown in nursery on 3 rd week of July, 2015 @ 60kg /ha and 20 days old seedlings were transplanted with spacing of 15 cm between rows and 10 cm between plants. The recommended fertilizer dose was 40:20:20 kg/ha N, P 2 O 5 and K 2 O, respectively. Full dose of P2O5 and K2O along with 25% N were applied as basal. Remaining 50% N top dressed at three weeks after transplanting and 25% at panicle initiation stage. Top dressing was done after 1 st and 2 nd hand weeding. Blast and leaf folder infestation observed for rice variety Khandagiri and to control these recommended plant protection measures were followed. Rainfall during crop growing period presented in Fig-1.  Data of yield attributing characters were recorded from all seven farmers of three locations.
One farmer represented the one relocation and the total seven replication data collected. During the data collection , the characters of crop like plant height (cm), the number of tillers per hill, panicle length (cm), grains per panicle, test weight (g) and yield (q/ha). The economics of trials were calculated as fallow: All the collected information from seven replications were statistically analyzed by analysis of (ANOVA) as randomized block design to conclude the significant level within treatments8 whereas correlation analyze through SPSS statistics. 22

Results and Discussion Varietal Performance
Significant response was noted for plant height between rice varieties (

Correlation Among Parameters
In case of rice variety Sahbhagi Dhan, plant height showed positive correlation with test weight whereas non-significantly negative correlation was observed with other parameters like tillers/hill, panicle length, grains/panicle and yield. 13 Tillers per hill were found to display positive correlation with test weight, grains per panicle, and grain yield but negative correlation was found with panicle length. 13 Highly positive significant association was obtained between panicle length and grains per panicle as well as grain yield ( Table 3). The positive correlation was showed by test weight with all the parameters whereas significant positive correlation of grain yield was recorded with grains per panicle and panicle length. However, yield with plant height was negative correlated. The most important yield attributing traits in rice are number of tillers, panicle length and number of grains per panicle which are directly proportional to yield 14,15,16 .
Improved rice varieties shown more net return then the local check variety (

Conclusion
On the basis of assessment, it may be concluded that the drought tolerant rice variety Sahbhagi Dhan was superior over the Satyabhama as well as old popular variety Khandagiri due to the highly drought tolerant capacity and short duration with more productivity. Therefore, Sahbhagi Dhan can replace the local check variety (Khandagiri) in experimental region.