Center Pivot Rice
Delta Center agronomists are working on a new way to grow rice. Rice is normally grown in flooded fields. It requires considerable labor for farmers to construct the levees and maintain the water gates. Many Missouri fields do not have enough clay content to hold floodwater for growing rice. The new cropping system allows farmers to grow rice with less water and labor. The project is funded by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Dr. Gene Stevens began testing center pivot irrigated rice in 2008. Research associates, Jim Heiser and Matt Rhine, helped develop effective weed and disease control programs for the new system. Stevens said the key to producing high yields is to select varieties with good blast resistance, chemigate with fungicides as needed, and make split applications of nitrogen fertilizer by fertigation. Dr. Earl Vories, USDA-ARS engineer worked with MU and University of Arkansas scientists to make a program to schedule the amount of water to apply each week based data from Commercial Ag electronic weather stations located around the state. A typical irrigation amount is ½-inch of water every other day. In 2010, the Delta Center scientists worked with Valmont Irrigation Company to test large scale rice production with center pivots on five Missouri farms. Also, in 2010, Stevens received a grant from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and Nature Conservation Trust to continue testing the system in Missouri and evaluate it in South Africa.
demonstrating center pivot rice at Neelyville, Missouri.
where center pivot rice is being studied.
with center pivot irrigation on a
hilly field in Southeast Missouri.
