Dumas-Johansen, Marc Kristof: Effect of the SRI

The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has been adopted by many resource poor farmers. In Cambodia approximately 80.000 farmers practice some sort of SRI andfarmers are able to increase their rice yields with lower input costs. SRI is based on transplantingone seedling per hill as opposed to several for traditional rice and managing a drying and floodingregime of the soil leading to alternately anaerobic and aerobic conditions.The objectives of this study were to evaluate the effect of SRI on the farmers¿ livelihood situation, potentials of increasing the soil Carbon pool and mitigation ofgreenhouse gases. The target farmers were able to increase their rice yields significantly using SRI as compared totheir traditional rice fields. Traditional rice fields yielded 2.19 t ha-1 and SRI fields yielded3.53 t ha-1 respectively. The main reason seems to be the use of only one seedling per hill thusreducing the competition for nutrients. Main constraints for further development of SRI would be the lack of highamounts of biomass.