New Delhi: Short-term Rice Varieties PR-126developer punjab agricultural universityDespite lower yields, its benefits in terms of input cost savings are something the opposition Congress has not considered and hence it is likely to be the center of controversy pushed by the AAP-led state government, which has raised varieties of objections.
Apart from reducing farm costs, PR-126 also has the potential to combat the air pollution menace in the Delhi-NCR as it provides farmers with an adequate post-harvest window to prepare their farms for the next crop without resorting to At burning straw. Therefore, greater use of short-term varieties means fewer biomass burning events. However, the results this year will remain to be seen as the peak harvest period is still some way off.
Different from the most popular Pusa-44 The variety developed by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) takes 155-160 days to grow, while the short-term PR-126 variety takes only 123-125 days. Reducing the time by 30-35 days not only means saving on irrigation input costs, but also saves energy and precious groundwater.
But on the other hand, the yield of PR-126 is 4-5 quintals less per acre than that of Pusa-44 which is 35-36 quintals per acre. It reduces 5 kg of rice even at the milling stage, prompting the Leader of Opposition in the Punjab Assembly Partap Singh Bajwa Slamming Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Monday for pushing PR-126.
“However, if the state opts for high-yielding short-term crop varieties, the yield issue can be resolved from next season, pusa-2090developed by IARI. The new variety matches Pusa-44 in terms of yield and PR-126 in terms of maturity and harvest preparation period (123-125 days),” said an official from the Ministry of Agriculture.
However, the Pusa-2090 variety has been officially released only in Delhi this year. Some farmers in the states of Punjab and Haryana are already growing the new variety on a limited experimental basis, but wider adoption will take several years.
“Unlike the Pusa-44 variety which takes 155 to 160 days to mature, the Pusa-2090 variety takes only 120 to 125 days. The yield (34-35 quintals per acre) of both varieties is almost the same,” Sangrur, Punjab Shukhjeet Singh Bhangu, a farmer of Bhanguan village in Kanakwal district, told TOI last month.
Bhangu, who planted Pusa-2090 on an acre of land on a trial basis, said the new variety will give farmers an extra 30 days to prepare for the next crop, mainly wheat, thereby significantly reducing their need to burn stubble. dependence. He claimed to have distributed seeds of the new variety to several other farmers in the Samruru district who had already harvested rice.
Not only do new varieties give farmers more time to prepare for the next crop, they also help them achieve equivalent yields with fewer input costs because they won’t need to carry out additional work if the crop is ready for harvest in 125 years. Irrigation and spraying cycles.
