SRI Global News: Aug - Oct. 2024 *SRI-Rice -- System of Rice Intensification

System of Rice Intensification, or SRI, is a farming method that increases rice yield while saving up to a third of water. This video shows how mechanized SRI is practiced on several farms in Taiwan.
SRI水稻栽培技術不僅能夠提升稻米產量，更能省下大約三成的灌溉用水。除此之外，SRI還有哪些好處呢？

... agriculture consumes more than 70% of the total water supply in Taiwan. During the past decade, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology (NPUST) has studied methods to decrease water consumption in paddy field. They found that applying the system of probiotic and rice intensifying irrigation (SPRI), which is based on SRI methods, could save up to 55% of water consumption in Pingtung.  SPRI is an agriculture method that uses more organic matter, more sun-dry cycles, more intermediate cultivating, and less water supply, less seedlings, less pesticide, and less chemical fertilizer.  Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are also employed to quickly assess crop health by using the multispectral sensor to estimate plant chlorophyll concentration, thereby enhancing the efficiency of field management.

Presentation at the First General Meeting of the Society of Conservation Agriculture - System of Rice Intensification (CA-SRI) in Taipei, Taiwan Presenter: Yu …

A field experiment was conducted at the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology (NPUST) to compare water use efficiency and rice yields from the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). The experiment involved using the following four  water depths: 2cm (SRI2); 3cm (SRI3); 4cm (SRI4); and 5 cm (SRI5) under intermittent irrigation based on visual observations by estimating soil hairline cracks. The yields of these four water depths were compared to the control plot irrigated at 3cm every week (SRI3/week). The results of this study revealed that yield attributes like number of spikelets per meter square and percentage of filled spikelets were determinant for the grain yield. SRI3 yielded better with 4,072kg/ha compared to SRI2 (3,448kg/ha), SRI4 (3,081kg/ha and SRI5 (2,604kg/ha). The highest water productivity was recorded in SRI3 at soil hairline cracks (0.19kg/m3). The study also revealed that wide cracks led to severe water stress, inducing low yields.