Growth of tandem long-mat rice seedlings using controlled release fertilizers: Mechanical transplantation can be more economical and high yielding

Abstract

The traditional soil-based rice seedling production for mechanical transplanting are resource-intensive, time consuming and laborious. The improvement and optimization of nutrient management in soil-less nursery raising methods like tandem long-mat seedlings (TLMS) is necessary for resource-efficient cultivation of rice. In present study, controlled-release fertilizer (CRF)-polymer-coated compound fertilizer with 3 months release period (PCCF-3M) was applied as seedling fertilizer (SF), and five different dosages of SF (SF-0, SF-10, SF-20, SF-30, SF-40) were compared with organic substrate as the control (CK). Among all SF treatments, the best results were obtained with the application of 20 g/tray of SF (SF-20), as the seedling quality and machine transplanting quality were comparable to that of CK. In contrast, the lower dosages (SF-0 and SF-10) resulted in low nitrogen content and inhibited shoot growth, and higher dosages (SF-30 and SF-40) resulted in toxicity (increased malondialdehyde accumulation) and inhibited the root growth. Similarly, SF-20 increased panicle number (5.6-7.0%) and yield (4.3-5.3%) compared with CK which might be related to the remaining SF entangled in root supporting the tiller growth of rice seedlings in the field. Moreover, SF-20 decreased the seedling block weight (53.1%), cost of seedling production (23.5%) and increased gross margin, indicating that it was easy to handle and economical. Taken together, our results indicate that SF-20 is a cost-effective way to promote the growth and transplanting efficiency of rice seedlings. To our knowledge, this study is the first to determine the optimum dosage of CRF for the soil-less production of rice seedlings.

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