Changjiang Yun News reported that “this production is completely beyond my expectation. It is very satisfying to be able to harvest 300 kilograms per mu for ratoon rice.” On November 26th 2017, Mr. Duan Zhongqiao, a villager from Tonghuan Village, Maochen Town, Xiaonan District, Xiaogan City, told the reporter excitedly. After the on-site inspection of the Hubei Provincial Department of Agriculture, Huazhong Agricultural University, and Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the 300-mu ratoon rice planted by Mr. Duan Zhongqiao in Maochen Village had an average yield of 369.1 kg per mu(5.536tons/ha) for ratoon crop.
Ratoon rice is the production of a second crop from the stubbles after harvesting of the main crop. Ratoon rice has advantages in saving labor, seed, water, pesticides, and seedbed, and ratoon crop has higher grain quality than the main crop.
Since 2009, Huazhong Agricultural University and the national “Thousand Talents Program” special experts, Changjiang Scholars Professor Peng Shaobing and Professor Huang Jianliang have joined forces with Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences and other related units to carry out research on the technical bottleneck of recycled rice production.
Traditional ratoon rice production requires manual harvesting in the first season, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive. In the first season, there will be wheel or track crushing damage to rice blast, which will affect the growth of rice regeneration buds and the yield of the regeneration season. After nearly 8 years of research and extensive demonstration in many areas such as Huanggang, xishui, Jingzhou Jiangling, Jianli, Honghu, Jingmen Shayang, etc., Professor Peng Shaobing and Huang Jianliang team has made significant progress in the integration and demonstration of high-yield cultivation techniques for harvesting high-yield ratoon rice. Under the condition of mechanized cultivation in the whole process, the ratoon rice fields cultivated by Mr. Gong Xinfu, a farmer of the Bali Lake Office in Qichun County, Huanggang City, had get yield of 424.4kg per mu (6.366kg/ha) for ratoon crop.
Professor Peng Shaobing believes that if the harvester is improved and the rolling area and rolling degree of the first season are reduced and controllable, there is still considerable potential for growth in the output of ratoon rice. In addition to the yield per mu, the head rice rate of ratoon rice is also an important factor affecting the comprehensive benefits of ratoon rice.
“In the past, farmers used to use Indica rice as ratoon rice. The Indica rice was slender and easy to break. The broken rice rate was high and the economic benefits were discounted. Mr. Duan Zhongqiao, the villager of Tonghuan Village, Maochen Town, Xiaonan District, Xiaogan City, use the hybrid Japonica-Indica rice as the ratoon rice, and the rice produced is more round than the indica rice, which can improve the head rice rate of the ratoon rice. This is also the problem that we need to focus on in the experimental demonstration in the future.” Professor Peng Shaobing believes that hybrid Japonica-Indica rice varieties can be used as the ratoon rice and can increase the head rice rate and improve the quality and comprehensive benefits of ratoon rice.
The area of middle-matured rice in Hubei Province is 18 million mu (1.2million ha) per year. The cultivated land resources for the development of ratoon rice are 4 to 5 million mu (260,000-330,000 ha), and the development potential of ratoon rice is huge. In recent years, the area of ratoon rice planting in Hubei Province has increased year by year. In 2017, the area of ratoon rice planted in the province reached 2.3 million mu (153,333ha), ranking second in the whole country. Only this can increase the yield of rice grain by 140 million jin (70,000tons in total), which increase the output for farmers more than 1 billion yuan.
