Effect of age of seedlings on the performance of drought tolerant Aman rice cultivars

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at the Field Laboratory of the Department of Agriculture, Noakhali Science and Technology University (NSTU), Sonapur, Noakhali, from July 2017 to December 2017 to study the effect of variety and age of seedling on yield performance of drought tolerant transplant aman rice. The experiment consisted of three varieties viz. BINA dhan7, BRRI dhan56 and BRRI dhan71 and five different ages of seedling viz.15 days old, 20 days old, 25 days old, 30 days old, and 35 days old. The experimental design was randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. Among the three varieties, BRRI dhan71 produced the highest grain yield (5.567 t ha^-1) and the lowest grain yield (4.975 t ha^-1) was obtained from BRRI dhan56. Among the five ages of seedlings, the highest grain yield (5.502 t ha^-1) was obtained from 35 days old seedling and the lowest grain yield (5.092 t ha^-1) was obtained from 15 days old seedling. In case of interaction between variety and spacing, the highest grain yield (5.723 t ha^-1) was obtained from BRRI dhan71 with 35 days old seedling and the lowest (4.730 t ha^-1) was obtained from BRRI dhan56 with 15 days old seedling. The result reveals that relatively older seedlings (35-days old) produce higher grain yield compared to the younger ones.