Int.J.Curr.Microbiol.App.Sci (2017) 6(2): 1750-1758 1750 Original Research Article http://dx.doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2017.602.196 Effect of Varieties, Depth and Methods of Planting on Growth, Yield Attributes, Yield and Economics of Rice J.P. Mehra 1 , D.K. Malviya 2 , S.K. Singh 1 *, B.R. Baraiya 2 , V.B. Upadhyay 2 , A. Gautam 2 , M.K. Gupta 1 and Dhanraj Patel 1 1 Department of Agronomy, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, BHU, Varanasi, U.P. 221005, India 2 Department of Agronomy, College of Agriculture J.N.K.V.V., Jabalpur (M.P.) 482 004, India *Corresponding author ABSTRACT Introduction Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is an important staple food crop of India, contributing 45% to the total food grain production. Hence, it is extensively grown in Eastern, Northern and Southern states of the country. In India rice is grown under diverse agro-ecological condition such as irrigated (19.6 million hectares), rainfed upland (7.1 million hectares), lowland (16.0 million hectares) and deep water (1.5 million hectares) (Moorthy and Mishra, 2004). It is widely grown in south eastern part of the country covering an area of 56.08 million hectares with an annual production of 92.6 million tonnes. India rank first in respect of area 44.50 million ha second in production 102.75 million tonne, only after China, but the productivity of rice is very low only 2.20 tonne ha -1 (Anonymous, 2012), which is quite low as compared to other rice growing countries like Japan (6.8 t/ha), Korea (6.1 t ha -1 ), china (5.9 t ha -1 ) and Indonesia (4.3t ha -1 ). Madhya Pradesh covers 1.76 million hectares with an annual production of 1.87 million tonnes and contributes 3.26 per cent of national hectare age with an average productivity of 2.06t ha -1 . Among the International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 6 Number 2 (2017) pp. 1750-1758 Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com Keywords DSSS, SRI, Production efficiency, Planting depth, Rice variety. Accepted: 24 January 2017 Available Online: 10 February 2017 Article Info The field experiment was carried out using split plot design with four replications during kharif 2009 and 2010 to investigate the effect of varieties, depth and planting methods on growth attributes, yield and economics of rice. The experiment consisted three level of varieties (V 1 - Sugandha-3, V 2 - JRH-5, V 3 - Pro-Agro-6444), two levels of depth (D 1 - 2.5, D 2 - 5.0 cm) in main plot and two level of planting methods (M 1 -SRI, M 2 -DSSS) arranged in sub-plot. Among the different tested varieties, V 3 - Pro-Agro 6444 produced significantly length of panicle, healthy grain panicle -1 (146.89 and 147.15), 1000- grain weight (29.25 and 29.59) and production efficiency (51.67 and 53.27) produced highest grain yield (72.86 and 75.11 qha -1 ) than other varieties, respectively during both the years. Significantly higher value of length of panicle, healthy grain panicle -1 , 1000- grain weight, production efficiency and grain yield were recorded under transplanting at D 1 - 2.5 cm than D 2 - 5.0 cm. Further, SRI system (M 1 ) was find higher yield attributing characters and finally produced maximum grain yield. Based on the result variety V 1 at shallow depth of 2.5 cm under SRI system was produced highest grain yield and economically the highest B: C ration were in V 3 (2.17), D 1 (1.80) and M 1 (1.76) by gaining highest net return during both years.