Govt. distributes paddy seed with wild strain that affects paddy cultivation

(January 31, 2009) Agrarian analysts suspect that a wild paddy strain is rapidly spreading paddy seeds that have allegedly been mixed with seed paddy distributed to farmers by state authorities. Compounding the issue, no programme has been envisaged to tackle this problem.

Agrarian analysts point out that a type of ‘wild paddy’ which has begun to spread in many areas of the country is reponsible for reducing the paddy harvest in the country.

“Wild plants directly and indirectly harm cultivation. The life cycle of some of the insects found in paddy fields are directly connected to these wild plants,” says Prof. Buddhi Marambe, Dean of the faculty of Agriculture of the University of Peradeniya.

They observed a change in paddy cultivation in 1998, where paddy seeds fell as soon as the paddy plant matured. Prof. Buddhi Marambe and Dr. Lakshman Amarasinghe of the Ministry of Agriculture continued studies on the problem and they found that there was no difference between this wild paddy strain and the Oryza Sativa paddy strain which is used by in Sri Lanka.

The wild paddy seed has a long or short ‘attachment’ at the end of it. However, it is difficult to recognize it from the ‘attachment’ because most old paddy types too bear the same feature.

Dr. Lakshman Amarasingha advised paddy farmers to leave the paddy field for two or three weeks after preparing it for cultivation so that the wild paddy plants would come up during that time. Once the wild paddy plants have come up, farmers could destroy them with a weedicide. Using this method wild paddy plants were eradicated in 1999 but during 2000,2001 years the problem came up again. The issue has risen its head again causing immense problems to farmers.
-Saliya Kumara Gunasekara (Lakbima News)

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