Agronomic Efficiency of Deep Urea Placement Technology in Lowland Rice Cultivation in the Ecological Conditions of the Sikasso Region in Mali: Case of the Village of Dalabani

In terms of human food consumption, rice is the world’s leading cereal and is nowadays the staple diet in the least developed countries. Current fertilization practice is based mainly on mineral fertilizers brought in on the fly which is inefficient because it leads to very high losses of nitrogen, and the increasing the productivity in lowland rice cultivation in Mali requires good soil fertilization management. The present study undertaken in lowland rice cultivation aims to improve fertilizer efficiency through deep placement of Urea (PPU) which envisages increasing the yields of lowland rice producers, reducing the amount of fertilizer used and decreasing environmental damage to the atmosphere and water. It was carried out in a farming environment following an experimental Split-plot system with four replications. The dose of organic manure and the form of mineral fertilizer taken at two and six levels of variation respectively were the factors studied. The combinations of factors resulted in twelve treatments. The results of the analysis show that organic fertilization only had a significant effect on tillering with the treatment without organic manure as the greatest number of tiller (16.41). On the other hand, the form of mineral fertilizer had significant and highly significant differences respectively on grain yield and number of tillers. The F4 (Granules (Urea + diammonium phosphate (DAP)) of 1.5 cm of diameter) treatment gave the maximum grain yield (2.68 t/ha) and number of tillers (17.45). The interaction of factors had a significant effect only on the number of tillers, with F0 without urea and DAP (control) having the highest performance with 22 of number of tillers. Maximum N uptake and N recovery were observed at the F1 (UG (Urea’s granule) + DAPS (DAP simple)) treatment level with values of 3455 kg/ha and 34% respectively.