By the six-season calendar, Poush and Magh are the winter months. The Poush cold has now set in: it was not felt much at the start of the month, but towards the end the whole country is shivering in a cold wave. Many people are preparing seedbeds for boro rice at this time, and the agriculture ministry and the Agricultural Information Service (AIS) under it have advised farmers on how to care for them and which techniques work best.

AIS says the cold wave is turning boro seedlings yellowish and drying them out, and seedlings may also die from cold injury (seedling scorch). Farmers need to take some extra care of boro seedbeds once a cold wave begins.

• During a cold wave, cover seedbeds with clear polythene from 10am until evening. If the cold wave lasts long, keep the seedlings covered day and night, with the polythene partly open on both sides of the bed.
• Keep 3 to 5 centimetres of water in the seedbed, preferably tube-well water. Drain it in the morning and add fresh water, and shake off the dew collected on the seedlings every morning.
• To control seedling scorch at an early stage, mix 2 millilitres of an azoxystrobin or pyraclostrobin fungicide per litre of water and spray the seedbed in the afternoon.
• If seedlings turn yellow, apply urea at 280 grams per decimal. If they are still not green after urea, apply gypsum at 400 grams per decimal.
• Use seedlings at least 35 to 45 days old for transplanting; seedlings of this age suffer lower death rates in the cold.
• If a cold wave starts at transplanting time, wait a few days and transplant once temperatures are normal.
• If a cold wave comes after transplanting, keep 5 to 7 centimetres of water in the field. Transplanting with the cold and seedling age in mind keeps seedlings fresh and gives a higher yield.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.