Comparative Performance of Drought-Tolerant Rice Varieties under Different Fertilizer Management Practices in North-western Bangladesh

Drought is a slow onset recurrent phenomenon in northwest part of Bangladesh. Drought has both direct and indirect impacts on crop yields. Hence, an experiment was conducted at the Nachole, Chapa Nawabganj during Aman season (July to December) of 2018 to investigate the performance of two drought tolerant rice varieties (BRRI dhan56 and BRRI dhan71) under different fertilizer management practices. The experiment was laid out in a split plot design with two varieties in the main plots and four fertilizer treatments such as T1 (Control), T2 (soil test-based fertilization), T3 (farmers practice) and T4 (soil test-based fertilization and 5 t/ha cowdung) in the subplots with three replications. 80 kg N ha-1, 25 kg P ha-1, 35 kg K ha-1, 10 kg S ha-1 and 3 kg Zn ha-1 were applied as Recommended Fertilizer Dose (RFD). Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur and zinc were supplied as urea, TSP, MoP, gypsum and zinc sulfate, respectively. BRRI dhan71 performed better than BRRI dhan56 considering yield contributing characters and yield of rice. On the other hand, the highest grain (5.927 t ha-1) and straw yield (5.845 t ha-1) were obtained in treatment T4 (Soil test-based fertilization and 5 t/ha cowdung). Considering both variety and treatment, BRRI dhan7l with soil test-based fertilization and 5 t ha-1cowdung (V2T4) showed the highest grain and straw yields of 5.947 t ha-1 and 5.857 t ha-1, respectively. Therefore, this combination could be recommended with some farmer's field trials for sustainable rice production.