Disentangling Challenges to Scaling Alternate Wetting and Drying Technology for Rice Cultivation: Distilling Lessons From 20 Years of Experience in the Philippines

Alternate wetting and drying (AWD) is a low-cost innovation that enables farmers to adapt to increasingly water scarcity conditions (such as drought), increase overall farm production efficiency, and mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It is seen as a pathway for transforming agri-food systems into more resilient, productive, biologically diverse, and equitable forms, ensuring our commitments to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper uses scaling up and innovation uncertainty frameworks to review the success and challenges of AWD's 20-year scaling trajectory in the Philippines and explain the key factors that have influenced its outcomes. The framework adapted for this study is also used to examine the fitness between the scaling context and requirements, organizational mission, and corresponding capabilities. Findings show the innovation platform that vertically integrated key actors and locally adapted AWD has helped foster essential breakthroughs in creating an enabling environment that took AWD to national policy adoption in the Philippines. However, the dominant focus on technology transfer, product focus, and preference for controlled environments in the scaling practice has neglected many important contextual factors, allowing mismatches in enabling policy incentives, institutions, and scale to diminish the impacts of AWD in gravity-based systems. Our findings suggest that rethinking and re-envisioning the ways in which the impact can be scaled in irrigation rice systems using AWD is critical to sustaining food security and making the agriculture sector more resilient to climate change

Relationships of leaf color chart and SPAD values to leaf N content of Jasmin rice in Northeast Thailand

Strong correlations among the leaf color chart (LCC), chlorophyll meter (SPAD) readings, and leaf N concentrations in modern rice varieties provide simple and economical methods for indirectly determining leaf N content. The LLC and SPAD have not been used widely with traditional varieties. This study aimed to determine whether the LCC and SPAD could be used to indicate the leaf N status of jasmine rice (KDML 105). Field experiments were conducted in June-November 2003 in farmers' fields in Kha Khom village, Ubon Ratchathani (UR), and in Chumpae Rice Experiment Station, Khon Kaen. Experimental treatments included four N levels (farmers’ practice, 0, 60, and 120 kg N per ha) in UR, and six N levels (0, 19, 38, 58, 75, and 113 kg N per ha) in Khon Kaen. For both sites, treatments were laid out in an RCBD with four replioations under well-watered conditions. LCC and SPAD measurements were taken on fully expanded leaves of 16 plants from maximum tillering to flowering stage. The same leaves were destructively taken to determine the leaf N content. Leaf N content was 1.7-3.5%, SPAD reading 26-43, and the LCC reading 1-4. Leaf N content was linearly related to SPAD (R2= 0.71-0.86, P is less than 0.01) and LCC readings (R2= 0.52-0.77, P is less than 0.01) and the slopes of regression lines differed among growth stages. For any given SPAD reading, KDML 105 had a lower leaf N content than modern varieties. SPAD and LCC readings estimated leaf N content of jasmine rice. The SPAD and LCC can be used for site-specific N management of jasmine rice in Northeast Thailand

Determinants in the Adoption of Alternate Wetting and Drying Technique for Rice Production in a Gravity Surface Irrigation System in the Philippines

Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) is a well-known low-cost water-saving and climate change adaptation and mitigation technique for irrigated rice. However, its adoption rate has been low despite the decade of dissemination in Asia, especially in the Philippines. Using cross-sectional farm-level survey data, this study empirically explored factors shaping AWD adoption in a gravity surface irrigation system. We used regression-based approaches to examine the factors influencing farmers’ adoption of AWD and its impact on yield. Results showed that the majority of the AWD adopters were farmers who practiced enforced rotational irrigation (RI) scheduling within their irrigators’ association (IA). With the current irrigation management system, the probability of AWD implementation increases when farmers do not interfere with the irrigation schedule (otherwise they opt to go with flooding). Interestingly, the awareness factor did not play a significant role in the farmers’ adoption due to the RI setup. However, the perception of water management as an effective weed control method was positively significant, suggesting that farmers are likely to adopt AWD if weeds are not a major issue in their field. Furthermore, the impact on grain yields did not differ with AWD. Thus, given the RI scheduling already in place within the IA, we recommend fine-tuning this setup following the recommended safe AWD at the IA scale