Tillage practices in corn 25000 20000 15000 10000 5000 0 20125 Zero 13328 6797 19528 14467 Minimum 5061 Tillage Practices Figure 6. Net income (PhP) of the different tillage management practices under Tillage x Variety Trial in Calabanga, Camarines Sur (DS 2000-2001). - 306 - 19084 14814 Farmer's 4271 Gross Returns Total Production Costs Net Income
Proceedings of the 8 th Asian Regional Maize Workshop, Bangkok, Thailand: August 5-8, 2002 Maize: A Newly Sequential <strong>Crop</strong> with Rice in Thailand Somchai Boonpradub 1 and Sanayh Kraokaw 2 1 Phitsanulok Field <strong>Crop</strong>s Experiment Station, Phitsanulok 65130, Thailand. 2 Field <strong>Crop</strong>s Research Institute, Bangkok 10900, Thailand. Abstract Maize is one of the dry land crops grown in a rice-based cropping system. However, its productivity has been often limited by major management constraints focusing on cultivars and cultural management. A series of field studies have been conducted since 1998 to study the productivity of maize grown after rice. It was found that maize grown after rice showed more income and profit as compared to the second rice. The best planting time for maize after rice was from November to December. After harvesting rice the land was plowed, harrowed and fertilized with 50-62.5-0 kg of N-P2O5-K2O ha -1 . Hybrid seeds mainly from single cross hybrids were planted with 0.75 x 0.20 m spacing with 1 plant hill -1 (66,666 plants ha -1 ). Three weeks after planting, urea (46-0-0) at the rate of 156 kg ha -1 was applied as a top-dressing fertilizer. To increase maize production in the paddy field, it was necessary to provide adequate water as applied by furrow-irrigation for its growth. The results also show that the yields of maize under recommended practices were generally greater than those of the farmers’ ones. It is rather obvious that maize after rice may be one of the alternatives cropping systems for rice farmers to intensify cropping on their lands during a dry season in Thailand. Introduction In the area where irrigation water is available during a dry season, after the main rice is harvested, it is soon possible to plant upland crops. The attendant factors with the post-rice environment are waterlogging and cool temperature at early vegetative stage, drought and high temperature at reproductive stage, poor soil granulation and soil compaction including short photoperiod (Boonpradub et al., 1998; Lantican, 1982). Thus, the desirable characters of upland crops for the post-rice are drought tolerance, waterlogging tolerance, early to medium maturity, photoperiod insensitive, early and rapid seedling development, tolerance to low and high temperature (Navarro, 1986). Some of the crops that are suited to this condition are soybean, mungbean (Gomez and Gomez, 1983) and maize (Lantin, 1986). The most popular cropping systems in Thailand are cereal – legume, i.e. rice – soybean, rice – peanut and rice – mungbean. Two-crop systems involving legumes are common in irrigated areas and the ricerice-rice system is becoming widespread because of the promotion of non-photoperiod-sensitive varieties of rice. However, the second rice in this pattern is often limited by the pests damage particularly brown planthopper. Hence, a new cropping system being promoted in Thailand is rice – maize. Maize as an important food and feed could be considered a more suited crop to replace the second rice. There is probably due to less water consumption than the second rice, break the population dynamics of the pest particularly brown planthopper, high yield and grain quality, high price and economic return including increase the amount of maize produced to cover the domestic demand (Boonpradub et al. 1998 ; Granados et al., 1994). Maize grown in dry season has been successfully cultivated in several countries throughout the Asian region, including India (Singh, 1986), Philippines (Gassity and Hermenegildo, 1990) and Vietnam (Tinh et al., 1992). - 307 -
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