Seedling raising techniques at farmers' level for mechanical transplanting

Bangladesh agriculture has been facing serious challenges of scarcity of labor and higher labour wages especially in peak harvesting and transplanting period. In the prevailing situation, there is an urge among the rice farmers to replace the traditional transplanting of rice seedling by mechanical means. Seedling preparation either on tray or on mat is one of the most important tasks for mechanical transplanting. Seedling tray making process needs manual labor for preparing and placing of soil on the tray and spread the pre-germinated seed on the ready tray. The main considerations of different tray making processes were to find out the time, labor, and water requirement. Three different types of soil medium were prepared for raising seedling. The first one was prepared by crushing and sieving the soil in powdered form and filling the trays. The second type of tray was prepared by pouring locally available mud from low land and third one was prepared by placing available mud from low land on the polyethylene sheet set on soil bed. Collection of mud from low land and preparing 50 trays required 2 man-hr. 1 man-hr was required to prepare 50 tray blocks on soil bed and with crushed soil 4.5 man-hr was required for preparing 50 trays. Time required to fill a tray (2 feet x 1 feet) with pre-germinated seed was 2 minutes by one skilled person. The overall germination and growth of the seedling after 7 days were found similar in all the trays and seed beds. Root development was observed better in the mud soil. Water requirement in the mud soil was more compared to crushed soil. There was a tendency of crack forming on the mud soil both in tray and bed.