ENHANCED WATER USE EFFICIENCY FOR IRRIGATED RICE IN INDONESIA WITH SYSTEM OF RICE INTENSIFICATION (SRI)

Abstract

Conventional rice cultivation with continuous flooding irrigation that commonly used in rice production characterized by insufficient water use because the quantity of irrigation water is usually supplied to the field is greater than plant water requirement. The current study was performed to evaluate System of Rice Intensification (SRI) practice in raising water use efficiency for sustainable rice production in Indonesia particularly in the rainy season. Achieving this goal, a field experiment was conducted in Karang Sari Village, Bekasi, West Java, Indonesia during the first rice season 2007/2008 (December 2007 to April 2008) in the rainy season. Here, two cultivation practices with different regimes were compared i.e., SRI regime and Conventional Practice (CP) regime. As the results, it was clearly observed that SRI regime raised water use efficiency index up to 37.6% by saving water input up to 26.07% compared to CP regime. The SRI regime also reduced excess water through percolation and runoff significantly. The SRI regime also resulted in better yield and crop performance compared to continuous flooding irrigation even if not significant. The main reason is that under SRI with intermittent irrigation, aerobic condition was created. This condition promoted higher activity of the plants for the establishment of a larger and deeper root as reported previous studies. Therefore, the results suggested that SRI is suitable way to raise water use efficiency without decreasing yield for irrigated rice in Indonesia.