Prepare 100 m2 nurseries to plant 1 ha.  Select a levelled area near the water source. Spread a plastic sheet or used polythene gunny bags on the shallow raised bed to prevent roots growing deep into soil.

Filling in soil mixture: Place a wooden frame of 0.5 m long, 1 m wide and 4 cm deep divided into 4 equal segments on the plastic sheet or banana leaves. Fill the rame almost to the top with the soil mixture.

Pre-germinating the seeds 2 days before sowing: Soak the seeds for 24 h, drain and incubate the soaked seeds for 24 h, sow when the seeds sprout and radical (seed root) grows to 2-3 mm long.

Sowing: Sow the pre-germinated seeds weighing 90 -100 g / m-2 (100g dry seed may weigh 130g after sprouting) uniformly and cover them with dry soil to a hickness of 5mm. Sprinkle water immediately using rose can to soak the bed and remove the wooden frame and continue the process until the required area is completed.

• Puddled lowland prepared as described in transplanted section
• Perfect leveling is a pre-requisite for the water management proposed hereunder

• Single  seedling of 15 days old.
• Square planting of 25 x 25 cm.
• Fill up the gaps between 7th and 10th DAT.
• Transplant within 30 minutes of pulling out of seedlings.
• There may be difficulty in crop establishment in areas with heavy downpour (North East Monsoon periods of Tamil Nadu)

• Irrigation only to moist the soil in the early period of 10 days
• Restoring irrigation to a maximum depth of 2.5cm after development of hairline cracks in the soil until panicle initiation
• Increasing irrigation depth to 5.0cm after PI one day after disappearance of ponded water

• Using rotary weeder / Cono weeder
• Moving the weeder with forward and backward motion to bury the weeds and as well to aerate the soil at 7-10 days interval from 10-15 days after planting on either direction of the rows and column.
• Manual weeding is also essential to remove the weeds closer to rice root zone.

• As per transplanted rice.
• Use of LCC has more advantage in N management.

• Time of application is decided by LCC score
• Take observations from 14 DAT in transplanted rice or 21 DAS in direct seeded rice.
• Repeat the observations  at weekly intervals up to heading
• Observe the leaf colour in the fully opened third leaf from the top as index leaf.
• Match the leaf color with the colours in the chart during morning hours (8-10 am).
• Take observation in 10 places.
• LCC critical value is 3.0 in low N response cultures like White Ponni and 4.0 in other cultivars and hybrids
• When 6/10 observations show less than the critical colour value, N can be applied @ 35kg N/ha in dry season and 30kg N/ha in wet season per application per ha.
• Green manure and farm yard manure application will enhance the growth and yield of rice in this system approach.