Impact of Seed Priming and Fungicide Seed Treatments on Disease Development, Crop Growth and Yield of Dry Direct-Seeded Basmati Rice in North-Western India

Dry direct-seeded rice (DSR) is an alternative and socio-economically viable technology addressing the trade-offs associated with the conventional puddle transplanted rice system. But inadequate establishment and higher incidence of some diseases such as brown spot and neck blast are the major reasons for the lack of scaling of DSR. In order to address the above issues, experiments were conducted to evaluate the combined impact of seed priming and seed treatment with fungicide (mancozeb 50% + carbendazim 25% WP) on the disease development, crop growth and yield attributes of direct seeded Basmati rice under laboratory and field conditions. Low disease severity of bacterial blight, brown spot, foot rot, neckblast, bunt and grain discoloration was observed when seeds were hormoprimed with 25 ppm GA₃ + fungicide seed treatment. Similar levels of disease suppression were observed for halopriming with 2% KNO₃ + fungicide seed treatment. Seed halopriming with 2% KNO₃ and hormopriming with 25 ppm GA₃ either alone or combined with fungicide treatment caused significant enhancement in germination percentage and seedling growth as compared to the untreated control under both laboratory and field conditions. These treatments also exhibited the highest plant population per m², panicle number per m², panicle weight and number of filled grains, leading to higher grain yields than in the remaining treatments.