Research on organic farming pays dividends

Same variety of rice is being raised separately in the plots earmarked for organic and inorganic methods of farming since 2006. The efforts of the scientists have started paying off during the last few years.

"The yields in the organic method of farming are on par with the same crop raised by us-ing fertilisers and pesticides in our farm. The management practices are being shared with the farmers and many of them are showing interest to switch over to organic farming," claimed Ms U. Vineeta, scientist.

According to Ms Vineeta, half an acre plot in the RRS is exclusively meant for organic farming using different kinds of manures such as poultry, press-mud compost, vermicompost, farmyard manure, neem cake, castor cake and karanja cake apart from bio-fertilisers.

The research team said that they noticed using karanja cake and castor cake resulted in high yields. The tests are carried out during early kharif (April to May 15) and rabi (October to November) seasons.

"The output was much high in the crops raised during kharif season because of faster rate of decomposition of manure applied to the crop in view of summer,” Ms Vineeta explained.

She attributed the reservations among cultivators against organic farming to scarcity of organic manure, high transportation cost besides labour problems. She observed that farmers would certainly opt for organic farming if the government offers special support price and marketing facility to enable them to transport their produce to organic food counters in the cities where consumers are after organic food.

Meanwhile, the RRS is also coming out with disease free short, medium and long duration high yielding varieties of rice containing superior nutritional value. Principal scientist (rice) Y. Suryanarayana said that they have been offering mini kits of NLR 4001 and NLR 4002 rice varieties after successfully tested them in research farm.