With July’s heavy rains and floods in Udupi damaging paddy seedlings, transplanted on 186 hectares, the Agriculture Department has suggested farmers to go for short-term crop varieties to cultivate paddy in the remaining kharif period.
According to the department, farmers can transplant the seedlings of Jyothi and Uma paddy varieties.
H. Kempe Gowda, Joint Director of Agriculture, Udupi, told The Hindu that the Jyothi variety can be harvested in 100-105 days of transplanting and the Uma variety can be harvested in 110 days of transplanting.
The seeds of both varieties are available at raitha sampark kendras and farmers, whose plantations have been affected, can retransplant after raising their seedlings.
The Joint Director said that a majority of farmers demanded seeds of MO 4 variety of paddy every year for kharif cultivation. The crop of this variety can be harvested after 135–145 days of transplanting the seedlings. Hence the flood-affected farmers can now retransplant the seedlings of the short-term varieties.
Mr. Gowda said that paddy seedlings had been transplanted on about 14,000 hectares in the district, when heavy rains and floods hit a few days ago. Rainwater stagnated on about 3,000 hectares of paddy fields. In some such fields, farmers were yet to transplant the seedlings.
He said that the seedlings got damaged only if the water stagnated for more than six days. Otherwise the seedlings will recover once the water recedes.
The flood-tolerant Sahyadri Panchamukhi variety withstood the water for 10 days.
Paddy was cultivated on about 37,700 hectares in the district in the 2021 kharif season. The target of cultivation this year was 38,000 hectares.
Many farmers in the district cultivated local ‘kaje’ varieties such as Karkala kaje and the like.
