Effects of Planting Date on Yield and Water Productivity of Rice in Dry-Bed Seeding

Increasing yield in Rice requires the knowledge of appropriate management methods such as planting date and introduction of new cultivars. This experiment has been carried out at Gorgan Research Station in 2020. It has been done as two separate experiments in a randomized complete block design (normal seeding date and late seeding date), each experiment including seven cultivars (Tarom hashemi, Fajr, Neda, Shiroudi, Tisa, Anam, and Binam) with three replications. Results show that the effects of seeding date have been significant on all studied traits (days to anthesis, days to maturity, high plant, number of tillers, Filled grain number, unfilled grain number, grain yield, biomass, water productivity, and harvest index). On the spring planting date, the highest grain yield has been observed in Neda and Shiroodi cultivars with 9023.3 and 8675.5 kg ha-1, respectively. Also, on the spring planting date, the highest water use productivity has belonged to Neda and Shiroodi cultivars with one and 0.98 kg.m-3, respectively. On the date of late planting, the highest water use productivity has occurred in Tisa and Binam cultivars at 0.74 and 0.63 kg.m-3, respectively. Due to grain yield and water use efficiency on spring planting date, Neda and Shiroodi cultivars and in late cultivation of Tisa and Binam cultivars can be introduced to farmers.