Until last year, Mr V. Shankar, a farmer of Vandavasi taluk in Tamil Nadu's Tiruvannamalai district was growing paddy through the conventional method on the 10 acres of land that he owned. That yielded him about 2.4 tonnes of paddy an acre.

Driven by curiosity on seeing the model farm of Syngenta, the Swiss crop protection major, next to his farm, he opted to go in for the company's Tegra seedling technology. That helped him to record a yield of 3.3 tonnes of paddy.

“The new seedling technology has helped me reap a higher yield,” says Mr Shankar.

“There are about 500 farmers in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu who have adopted this new Tegra technology,” says Mr R. Suresh Babu, head of rice research in India for Syngenta.

Under the Tegra technology, paddy seedlings are grown in a special media comprising straw, soil, nutrients, chemicals and other such things in a tray.

The seedlings are developed in a nursery and then replanted after 15 days with a special transplant machinery. The media is a Syngenta finding and it enjoys a patent for it.

Once transplanted, the seedlings take root and begin to grow.

Syngenta offers the technology at Rs 75 a tray and an acre requires 70 trays. “If farmers from a particular village approach us and opt for this as a group, the cost could come down,” says Mr Suresh Babu.

“The cost came to Rs 67 a tray for me,” says Mr Shankar.

Syngenta, at this cost, grows the paddy seedlings that is chosen by the farmer or considered apt for the agro-climatic conditions, transplants them in the farmer's field with its special machinery and offers counsel until harvest.

“It is an end-to-end solution that we offer to farmers through the Tegra technology,” says Mr Suresh Babu. “Farmers will first have to prepare their field as specified by us,” he said.

“It is about Rs 1,000 more than what we do conventionally. But that extra cost is more than compensated by the higher yield,” says Mr Shankar.

Syngenta sees playing a major role in offering Tegra as finding farm labour is becoming difficult and labour costs are shooting up.

What Syngenta is doing now is seen as pilot projects. “We have potential to adopt this technology in Karnataka, Punjab and Haryana.

This will happen in 3-5 years time,” says Dr K.C. Ravi, Syngenta's Head of Corporate Affairs in South Asia.

Japan is the leading exponent of this method of cultivation, helping it to increase its productivity tremendously. South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and China, too, have adopted this technology.

This system is not comparable with the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) that has become popular in Tami Nadu, say Syngenta officials.

“SRI is done manually while ours is mechanical,” said Mr Suresh Babu.

Syngenta is also looking into aspects of how much water could be saved through the Tegra technology since paddy is a water-intensive crop.

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