The opportunity of direct seeding to mitigate greenhouse gas emission from paddy rice field

Abstract

Direct seeded rice (DSR) is one of the options to reduce CH4 emission because it uses less water during initial cropping but it sometimes has side effects such as increasing N2O emissions. The trade-off N2O and CH4 production in rice soils makes a real challenge to reduce the gas production. Nonetheless, few studies have observed the effect of DSR to GHG emission. This study aims to investigate the option of agriculture strategy used to reduce GHG emission without any yield loss through DSR. The study was conducted during rainy season at experimental field of Indonesian Agricultural Environment Research Institute (IAERI), Central Java, Indonesia. We compared the emission of CH4 and N2O, yield and yield components that affected by DSR and TPR practices. Total CH4 emission in TPR was from 352 kg ha-1 season-1 and, it ranged from 187 kg ha-1 season-1 in the DSR. The CH4 emissions were 47% lower for DSR than for TPR during a rice growing season. No significant differences were observed among crop establishments on N2O emissions. GWP were reduced by 46.4% under DSR compare to TPR. Crop-establishment did not influence grain yield, indicating the potential of DSR as alternative methods of establishing lowland rice with low GHG emissions.