Journal of Biology, Agriculture and Healthcare www.iiste.org ISSN 2224-3208 (Paper) ISSN 2225-093X (Online) Vol.3, No.18, 2013 104 The Improvement of Red Rice Paddy Growth by Population Arrangement and Organic Fertilizer in Dry Land Sri Budiastuti 1* , Djoko Purnomo 1 , Ulfa Lutfianis 2 1. Department of Agro technology, Faculty of Agriculture, Sebelas Maret University, Jl. Ir. Sutami 36A, Kentingan, Surakarta, Central Java 57126, Indonesia 2. Undergraduate of Agriculture Faculty, Sebelas Maret University, Jl. Ir. Sutami 36A, Kentingan, Surakarta, Central Java 57126, Indonesia * E-mail of the corresponding author: budiastutiw@yahoo.com Abstract The requirement of red rice always increases periodically but the availability of its at wetland has been recessive by land use change and rice cultivation in general. Alternative solution is directed to dry land and be the opportunity of red rice paddy area expansion that based on appropriate technology. In fact, red rice paddy has cultivated on the dry land in scatter plot system and the production is relatively low (1.5-2.5 ton.ha -1 ). Scatter plot system causes the high competition between plants and gives directly impact on production. There are many wide areas of dry land in Indonesia and still not productive, so the good cultivation method has to be created through the arrangement of plant population and organic fertilizer as good agricultural practices manifestation. The goal of research is to increase production of red rice with high quality continuously and to improve the potency of dry land and also to increase the capability of dry land as a planting area. The research is conducted by experiment method by Randomized Completed Bock Design with plant population (scatter plot, 2, 4, 6 seeds per hole) as first factor and dose of manure (10, 3, 5, 7 ton.ha -1 ) as the second factor (there are 16 combination treatments). Each of combination treatments is replicated three times. The result shows that combinations of 6 seeds per hole with 3 ton.ha -1 of manure give the highest amount of productive tiller and dry weight of grain (1.3 gram per clump and it is equal with 3.25 ton.ha -1 ). Keywords: Red rice paddy, population arrangement, organic fertilizer, dry land 1. Introduction Paddy is the main food crop in Indonesia and almost all of the people need it for daily food. It means the rice production must be available continuously. Actually, rice production in Indonesia is not sufficient and for ad equating domestic demand, the government makes decision to import rice from foreign country such as Thailand. Those are caused by reducing of plant area especially in wetland or land field that completed with irrigation channel (caused by land use change) and the high price of production facilities. The wise effort should be done immediately such as cultivation on non irrigation technique land field which is directed on a dry land or rain fed land either on agro forestry system or monoculture with appropriate paddy. The development of paddy cultivation technology on dry land should be the first priority effort for preserving food availability and especially to reach food security. The kind of paddy which is cultivated on dry land usually be called Gogo paddy. Those are the kind of paddy that can be planted on the limited water condition, unfortunately the productivity of Gogo paddy is still low either production or the quality, because the protein content just less than 6.8 gram per 100 gram. For recovering the production and quality of gogo paddy is needed cultivation technology through development of specific local commodity for improving high production. The potential of local dry land paddy that can be improved intensively is the kind of paddy which produces red rice or brown rice. Red rice is fulfill of vitamin and fiber that useful for maintaining human health, so it is worthy to increase production of red rice paddy on dry land that based on good agricultural practices. Generally paddy cultivation is done on wet land which is begun by nursery and after 21 days be moved on wet land (sawah), one seed per hole with specific plant spacing. While Gogo paddy does not need nursery process, so the way for planting just scattered without plant spacing. That method causes high competition either on vegetative or generative phase and finally influences rice production. The cultivation technique for reducing water, nutrition and light competition can be closed with arrangement of plant population such as determination of amount of seed per hole on certainly area. The high production of red rice paddy is determined by the amount of tiller on vegetative phase and then finally be a productive tiller. The productive tiller is determined by flower primordial formation of every tiller until seed formation. Thus vegetative growth is determined by the intensity of competition on growing phase and the formation of flower and seed are determined by the fulfillment of water and nutrition. So the growth requirement should be prepared from vegetative until generative phase. Unfortunately it is not easy to do because of dry land condition that always has minimal nutrition and water.