RICE RATOONING - IRRI books - International Rice Research Institute

22 RICE RATOONING2. Relationship between rice price and break-even yield of a ratoon crop andmain rice crop.Evaluating rice ratoon patternsAn advantage of ratooning, other than lower production cost, is its short durationcompared to a planted rice crop. Zandstra and Samson (10) recorded growingseason requirements of between 195 and 245 d, depending on the method of firstcrop establishment (i.e., transplanted or direct seeded) and whether the second cropwas transplanted or ratooned (Table 2). A ratoon crop may provide the opportunityfor a second rice harvest in a short wet season, or the possibility of an upland cropfollowing the rice ratoon.It is instructive to evaluate the profitability of patterns as opposed to crops inisolation. A better sense of the benefits of ratooning would be gained by comparingthe productivity of two short duration transplanted rice crops (TPR - TPR), atransplanted rice crop followed by a ratoon crop (TPR - ratoon) or an upland crop(TPR - ULC), or possibly a three crop pattern (TPR - ratoon - ULC). Clearly, thetechnical viability of each pattern depends on the length of the growing season, aswell as on the characteristic rainfall at the onset and termination of the monsoon.Few data sets were available which permit such an analysis. While dated, themost useful for our purpose was that of Bahar and De Datta (2). They compared theproductivity of three rice patterns: TPR - TPR, TPR - WSR, and TPR - ratoon. Inthese experiments, the first crop (TPR) was planted in the 1974 dry season, the