Efficacy of Drought Tolerant Rice Variety Swarna Shreya in North-eastern Ghat Zone of Odisha through Frontline Demonstration

A continuous 3 year demonstration using drought tolerant rice variety Swarna Shreya was carried out in participatory mode in farmers’ field during Kharif season 2019, 2020 and 2021 at Lathipadsa village of Surada block of Ganjam district under north-eastern ghat zone of odisha. Major constraints of traditional rice cultivation are the low productivity in upland areas due to lack of knowledge and partial adoption of recommended package of practices by rice growing farmers. Also because of less water sometime farmers do not take any crop. Therefore, present demonstration programme has been undertaken to popularize/introduce stress tolerant rice var. Swarna Shreya in drought prone and upland areas of Ganjam district of Odisha. An average yield of 38.33 q ha-1 was recorded under demonstration plots as compared to 32.17 q ha-1 in farmers practice plots. The yield improvement due to the improved practices was 18.69 percent over farmers' practice. Average technology gap, extension gap, technology index was 6.67 q ha-1,6.17 q ha-1, 14.81 percent under three year frontline demonstration programme were recorded. The stress tolerant rice variety Swarna Shreya gave higher net return of Indian Rupee (INR) 33500, 40655 and INR 45350 ha-1 as compared to farmers practices with INR 26100, 23520 and 24650 ha- 1 during Kharif season of 2019, 2020 and 2021, respectively. The benefit cost ratio (B:C ratio) of rice cultivation under improved practices were found to be 1.95, 2.13 and 2.08 as compared to 1.67, 1.60 and 1.58 under farmers practices.