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From: Norman Uphoff <ntu1@...>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 10:04:21 -0500
To: "mdms" <mdmsbrt@...>
Cc: cevans@..., robert.davey@...
Subject: Yield data

Dear Basu Dev,
Thank you for the update and report. I have taken the liberty of retyping
the message into a Word file so that the table is legible (the email
formatting scrambled the numbers) and of polishing some of the English, as
attached for your and Chris' and Bob's use. I look forward also the next
season results. I am pleased that your results continue to bear out the SRI
effect. I am glad that you could get most of the SRI effect with 21-day
seedlings. With your water management problems, it may be best to go to
older seedlings. I suggest that you keep in mind the possibility of
capturing even larger gains with younger seedlings for those farmers who
can manage them. I attach my trip reports from an Indian visit last month.
One AP farmers there on his own planted 10-day and 5-day seedlings, and was
pleased with both. I also send a picture from Cuba that is of two plants,
same variety and same age, both 53 days old, but the conventional one just
taken out of the nursery (that is the age at which transplanting is done in
Cuba, to have 'hardy' plants -- that have lost much of their growth
potential). The SRI plant was transplanted at 9 days. For your information.
I trust that your and your colleagues' efforts are going to keep SRI
progressing in Nepal. You didn't show any cost calculations, but the cost
of production per kilo of rice should have been even more favorable for the
SRI plots. Farmers think about costs and returns to their investment of
land, labor, water and money. If you can, try to calculate of estimate
this, as this info should be very important to farmers. I have continued
looking for funding to share with partners working on SRI in various
countries but so far have not had any good leads. I hope you can keep up
the efforts somehow or pass them on the farmers and others who will
persevere because of the merits. With all best wishes,
Norman