Comparative Evaluation of Seed and Grain Quality Parameters of Rice (Oryza sativa L.) Varieties under SRI and Conventional Methods of Rice Cultivation

India is the largest producer of rice (Oryza sativa L.) next to China in the world. Rice cultivation is a huge water demanding enterprise. In recent years, water table has depleted at a very rapid rate throughout the globe, thus, posing alarming threats and limiting the scope for cultivation of high water consuming crops especially rice. Challenges in maintaining the sustainability of rice farming have been increasing with the increased scarcity of water and competition for water resources, declined yield levels with low grain quality and increasing the production costs due to more use of agriinputs (Chapagain and Yamaji, 2010). Therefore, it is very much important to search for water saving technologies without reducing the yields. System of Rice Intensification cultivation (SRI) is visualized as one of the water saving rice cultivation. SRI cultivation method offers to minimize water consumption for rice cultivation and to increase the productivity (Laulanie, 1993). System of rice intensification, developed in Madagascar in the 1980s, is a system approach to increase rice productivity with International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 6 Number 8 (2017) pp. 3653-3660 Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com