Abstract
Rice yield and protein content have been shown to be highly variable across paddy fields. In order to characterize this spatial variability of rice within a field, the two-year experiments were conducted in 2002 and 2003 in a large-scale rice field of $6,600m^2$ In year 2004, an experiment was conducted to know if prescribed N for site-specific fertilizer management at panicle initiation stage (VRT) could reduce spatial variation in yield and protein content of rice while increasing yield compared to conventional uniform N topdressing (UN, ,33 kg N/ha at PIS) method. The trial field was subdivided into two parts and each part was subjected to UN and VRT treatment. Each part was schematically divided in $10\times10m$ grids for growth and yield measurement or VRT treatment. VRT nitrogen prescription for each grid was calculated based on the nitrogen (N) uptake (from panicle initiation to harvest) required for target rice protein content of $6.8\%$, natural soil N supply, and recovery of top-dressed N fertilizer. The required N uptake for target rice protein content was calculated from the equations to predict rice yield and protein content from plant growth parameters at panicle initiation stage (PIS) and N uptake from PIS to harvest. This model equations were developed from the data obtained from the previous two-year experiments. The plant growth parameters for this calculation were predicted non-destructively by canopy reflectance measurement. Soil N supply for each grid was obtained from the experiment of year 2003, and N recovery was assumed to be $60\%$ according to the previous reports. The prescribed VRT N ranged from 0 to 110kg N/ha with average of 57kg/ha that was higher than 33kg/ha of UN. The results showed that VRT application successfully worked not only to reduce spatial variability of rice yield and protein content but also to increase rough rice yield by 960kg/ha. The coefficient of variation (CV) for rice yield and protein content was reduced significantly to $8.1\%\;and\;7.1\%$ in VRT from $14.6\%\;and\;13.0\%$ in UN, respectively. And also the average protein content of milled rice in VRT showed very similar value of target protein content of $6.8\%$. Although N use efficiency of VRT compared to UN was not quantified due to lack of no N control treatment, the procedure used in this paper for VRT estimation was believed to be reliable and promising method for managing within-field spatial variability of yield and protein content. The method should be received further study before it could be practically used for site-specific crop management in large-scale rice field.