Abstract:
Most indigenous rice farmers have adopted urea broadcasting because it is easy and
convenient in terms of time and labour requirements but it results in low yield due to
fertilizer loss by leaching and volatilization. In this work, Urea Deep Placement (UDP)
treatment was used because it involves one time application of urea fertilizer, results in
reduced weed infestation and negligible loss of urea fertilizer due to leaching and
volatilization. A field experiment was carried out at the School of Agriculture Teaching,
Commercial and Research Farm, Twifo-Wamaso outstation, University of Cape Coast from
2018-2019 to study effects of three sowing methods and determine the impact of two
fertilizer placement methods on the productivity of three rice varieties for the minor and
major seasons. The experiment was laid out in a split plot design with three replications for
the sowing methods and four replications for the fertilizer placement methods. The results
showed that, higher paddy yield was obtained in transplanting (2.30 t/ha) method as
compared to drilling (1.96 t/ha) and broadcasting (1.57 t/ha) for smallholder rice cultivation.
Among the sowing methods, transplanting had higher number of tillers per hill, plant height,
paddy yield and straw yield than the other sowing methods. The results clearly suggested
that UDP treatments can increase yield better than broadcasting application. Paddy yield
obtained under UDP treatment was 2.85 t/ha whiles BCT treatments recorded 2.24 t/ha for
smallholder rice cultivation. Based on the results obtained, it can be concluded that
interaction effect of transplanting of various varieties and UDP treatment produced
significantly higher grain yield.
