The Agriculture Department would adopt 84 villages in the district to promote the system of rice intensification (SRI) technique in paddy cultivation during the samba and thaladi seasons this year. One assistant agriculture officer would be assigned to each of these villages to ensure that the entire paddy area in the adopted villages were brought under the SRI, without any omission, Agriculture Department officials told The Hindu here on Wednesday.
About 62,500 hectares (ha) are targeted to be covered under samba and thaladi in the district this year. Of this, the SRI technique would be promoted in about 29,000 ha, officials said. So far, about 9,838 ha have been covered under samba in the district and of this the SRI has been adopted in about 5,300 ha. Planting of samba/thaladi would be completed before December.
Officials expect that the target for paddy coverage under samba and thaladi would be achieved this year, thanks to the widespread rain in the district.
The Agriculture Department had planned to distribute 531 tonnes of certified seeds of medium duration varieties. Of this, 412 tonnes of certified seeds of improved white ponni, Co.43, BPT 5204, ADT.39, ASD.19 and TRY-1 have been distributed through Block Agricultural Extension Centres.
This apart, about 150 tonnes of certified paddy seeds were planned to be distributed through primary agricultural cooperative societies under various schemes. So far, 124 tonnes of certified seeds have been distributed through the PACBs.
Currently, about 120 tonnes of certified seeds were available with the agricultural extension centres, and another 24 tonnes of seeds with the PACBs. On Wednesday, a demonstration of SRI planting was conducted at Athani near Manachanallur in the district by the department officials in the presence of J.Sekar, Joint Director of Agriculture. Mr.Sekar explained to the farmers the techniques to be adopted for increasing yield and appealed to farmers to adopt the SRI technology in a big way to achieve the targeted increase in productivity.
Deputy Directors of Agriculture (state schemes) S.Sabha Natesan and R.Chandrasekaran (central schemes) elaborated on the cluster approach to get higher yield.
