Traditional nurseries are flooded before plant harvest. People sit in the water for hours at a time to pull out seedlings plant by plant from the ground, a very unpleasant and unhealthy task. The roots are washed in the water and all soil is removed. Transportation is more labor intensive, as plants are heavier, and more plants are needed per rice field surface compared to SRI. The time between harvesting and transplanting can reach one or sometimes two days.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
SRI seedlings are harvested with a hoe, cutting easily through the light textured soil below the roots. The clay in the soil guarantees that roots remain protected by the soil during transportation and until transplanted. Ideally, SRI nurseries are set up close to the plot, so that the seedlings can be transplanted in no more than the recommended 15 to 30 minutes.
Transplanting
 
Under SRI, rice seedlings are transplanted when they have two leaves, at 8 to 9 days after sowing in the Goundam/Dire area (picture left above). In contrast, usual practice in the area is to transplant rice seedlings from 30 to 45 days old (picture right above). Conventional research recommends transplanting at 21 days.
June 26, 2008
SRI Transplanting
 
Seedlings are transplanted singly (one per hill) in straight lines with a spacing of 25 cm x 25 cm. We are also testing a wider spacing of 30 cm x 30 cm with a few farmers. Line planting is done either with the help of a marker (like a rake)  that is pulled across the mud (pictures at top and on the right), or with a marked string (pictures at bottom and on the left). The marker works best in soils with uniform mud consistency (that are well puddled), which is not always the case in our SRI fields. For this reason, it is usually faster and easier to work with the string. Once the initial set-up is done, and people get used to the new system, transplanting goes pretty fast.
 
Critics of SRI often claim that the transplanting is more labor intensive and thus more costly. Including the time spent in the nursery as part of the transplanting activity, we do not yet know according to our initial observations, which of the systems is more labor intensive. We are collecting labor data on the different steps, and will share our analysis with you later on.  
Traditional Rice Transplanting
 
Under the conventional system, planting is not done in line. The spacing is a bit less than 25cm x 25cm. Seedlings are transplanted at 30 to 45 days old, and with three to four plants per hill.
Removing Seedlings from the Nursery