Effect of Fertilizers and Irrigation Practices on the Growth and Yield of Boro Rice in Haor Area of Bangladesh

The experiment was conducted at the farmers’ field, Bahadurpur village, Sunamganj Sadar upazila, Sunamganj district, during November 2014 to May 2015 to study the effect of fertilizers and irrigation practices on the growth and yield contributing characters of boro rice (cv. BRRI dhan29) in haor area. The experiment comprised two level of fertilizers viz. F1= Farmers’ practice based fertilizers (180-42-42 kg ha-1 of Urea-TSP-MoP) and F2= BARC recommended fertilizers (300-112-127-75-11 kg ha-1 of Urea-TSP-MoP-CaS04-ZnS04); and three irrigation practices viz. I1= Farmers’ practice, I2= Alternate Wetting and Drying Method, and I3= Wet method. 2x3 factorial fitted into a randomized complete block design (RCBD) experiment was laid out with five farmers’ field as replications. The plant height significantly affected due to fertilizers application at 45, 60, 75, 90 Days after transplanting (DAT) and at harvest. BARC recommended dose of fertilizers gave the longer plant (87.62 cm) at harvest whereas the shorter plant (83.98 cm) was observed in farmers practice base fertilizer application. Plant height varied significantly due to different irrigation practice at 30 and 90 DAT. The variation of number of total tillers hill-1 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90 DAT and at harvest was significant due to fertilizers application. BARC recommended dose of fertilizers gave the higher tillers number hill-1 (16.16) at 75 DAT and the lower number of tillers hill-1 (15.00) was noticed in farmers practices base fertilizer application at 75 DAT. The higher grain yield (8.54 t ha-1) and straw yield (11.09 t ha-1) were recorded due to application of BARC recommended fertilizers over Farmers’ practice based fertilizers. Among the three levels of irrigation practices wet irrigation method performed the best in respect of grain yield (8.36 t ha-1). The highest grain yield (8.86 t ha-1) was observed from the interaction of BARC recommended fertilizers with wet irrigation method. Nutrient contents in post-harvest soils were higher compared to initial soils due to application of BARC recommendation guide based fertilizers. Higher doses of fertilizer treated plots in BARC recommended fertilizers with Wet irrigation method provided the gross margin and highest benefit cost ratio (BCR) among the treatments. The overall results indicated that BARC recommended dose of fertilizers influenced the growth and yield characters of rice varieties (cv. BRRI dhan29).