Cultivation and planting methods of single-middle-late season rice in summer fallow field of the vegetable farm

An experiment was conducted during May to September, 2006 on single-middle-late season rice planting and cultivation methods at Huida and Honglin Vegetable Farm in Yuanzhou Town, Boluo County, Guangdong Province. Conventional rice “Huanghuazhan” was used as the material in the experiment to explore the cost- and labor-saving, environment-friendly cultivation patterns of rice in rice-vegetable rotation system. The results show an insignificant difference in rice yield under different cultivation methods. As for the planting methods, although cast-transplanting and transplanting methods yield similar grain amount, grain yield under the 2 methods is significantly higher than under direct seeding. Among the 3 cultivation methods, conventional tillage produces higher number of effective ears but less grains number per ear. Contrary to conventional tillage, no-tillage and no-tillage without flooding have lower number of effective ears but higher grain number per ear. There exists no significant difference among the 3 cultivation methods in terms of seed setting rate and 1000-grain weight. Direct seeding has more effective ears, less per-ear grain, lower 1000-grain weight, and consequently lower yield. Cast-transplanting has reasonable number of effective ears, fairly high grains number per ear, higher spikelet number, and therefore higher 1000-grain weight and yield. Transplanting has similar number of spikelets as direct seeding, but better filled grains, and therefore has medium yield. The experiment suggests that conventional-tillage, no-tillage, and no-tillage without flooding are practicable rice cultivation methods. However, transplanting and cast transplanting are more feasible planting methods than direct seeding of single-middle-late season rice under rice-vegetable rotation cropping system.