Rice panicles appeared earlier in SRI plots than in the control plots. This occurred across all the villages, as shown in the photos below. Early in the season, we had already observed faster development under SRI: see blog entry Field Comparison 30 Days after Establishing the Nursery. This difference was less pronounced during the tillering stage (see blog entry Tillering), but became obvious again when the panicles appeared. The first established SRI plots show an advanced maturation compared to the control plots; we estimate the SRI plots to be at least one to two weeks ahead (to be confirmed).
Note that seeding was done the same day for SRI and the control in this test.
Photo: randomly selected plants from the SRI (left) and control (right) plots of farmer Mossa Ag Alhousseini from Bagadadji village (see his SRI field on the last photo of this page).
Rice develops faster in SRI Fields
SRI Timbuktu Blog
A shorter crop cycle exhibits at least two major advantages: i) it requires less irrigation, thus reducing the cost of pumping water, and ii) it may allow farmers to switch from shorter cycle rice varieties to the more productive longer cycle varieties.
In villages where floodwater, used for irrigation, arrives late in the season, farmers use short cycle varieties to allow the rice crop to mature before the cool season begins. According to farmers, short cycle varieties have a lower yield potential (3 to 6 t/ha) than longer cycle varieties (5 to 8 t/ha). The faster development of rice under SRI may allow farmers in certain locations to switch from shorter cycle to longer cycle varieties.
Farmer Mossa Ag Alhousseini (in white) of Bagadadji village at sunset next to his SRI field: “In the beginning, people who didn’t participate in the SRI test treated us like fools, now they regret not having learned the techniques for themselves. I would like to see all 120 farmers who share this irrigation perimeter using SRI, allowing us to cut the water pumping costs considerably. We five SRI farmers can help to teach the others.”
In the village of Adina-Koira, panicles in the SRI plot have already emerged (on the left), unlike in the control plot (on the right).
Field agent Harouna shows us the test plots of farmer Kaga Oumar of Douegoussou village (see Impact of Weeding blog entry). Both plots suffered from weed infestation and late weeding. This neglect affected the control plot (on the right) more than the SRI plot (on the left), the difference in crop development is even larger than what we see in other SRI and control plots.
Panicles have emerged in the SRI plot (on the left), but not yet in the control plot (on the right) in the plots of farmer Aguissa Ag Ibrahim from Bagadaji village.
Test fields in Kessou-Koreye village: plants in the SRI plots (on the left) are much more developed than those in the control plots (on the right).
October, 2008
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