Agriculture & Horticulture

Biography

Biography: Maclin Dayod

Abstract

Rice is an important staple for more than half of the world's population. Hence, increasing yield and nutritional quality of the crop to complement current strategies to reduce malnutrition are crucial. This study had evaluated the potential of calcium silicate and organic fertilizer as yield enhancers and bio-fortification fertilizers in rice. Results obtained show no difference in yield and other vegetative and reproductive parameters among all the treatments. There was also no difference in term of nutritional contents in the rice grain except for calcium and silicon. Soil-applied 1.36 t/ha of calcium silicate increases dietary silicon content in the grain to about 30% higher than the 1.76 t/ha of calcium silicate and 2.16 t/ha of organic fertilizer treatments but was comparable to the control. However, calcium silicate treated plants had about 30% lower calcium content in their grains than the control. The results from this study are in contradictory with the previous reports on the beneficial effects of calcium silicate application in rice and various other crops. Since calcium silicate is quite expensive, other sources of calcium and silicon, rate and time of applications may be explored.