Study on dry farming and ratooning cultivation techniques of rice in Rwanda

Through measuring and analyzing the dynamic change of air temperature from March, 2014 to July, 2016 in Rubona, Rwanda, it was made clear that the duration from 2nd, December to 20th, April next year are the safe heading stage for local rice varieties. Based on the local temperature condition, Japonica rice cv. ‘Jinshan 28’ was used to conduct dry farming and ratooning cultivation technique experiment. The result showed that, by using dry farming and ratooning cultivation techniques and sowing in safe period, the local one-cropping season cultivation could be changed to two-cropping cultivation with ratooning rice varieties. It could not only raise the land utilization rate, the labour productivity and rice yield, but also reduce labor costs and save water resource.