“When the Fertilize Right (FerRight) project began working with rice farmers in Can Tho's Thanh An, Thanh Phu, Thoi Xuan, and Trung Hung communes, mechanized direct seeded rice (mDSR) was practiced by fewer than 1 in 100 of them. Two years later, the project's midline farmer survey found that 18% of farmers in these communes had adopted the technology — up from a 2023 baseline of just 0.7%. Fertilizer deep placement, a complementary practice often paired with mDSR, has also taken hold, now reaching 0.5% of farmers and growing. Together, the numbers are one of the clearest signals yet that the project, funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and implemented by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), is changing how farmers cultivate their rice.

Unlike traditional broadcast seeding, mDSR, paired with fertilizer deep placement, uses dynamic, air-assisted row seeders to place seed precisely 1 to 2 mm into the soil and deliver nutrients directly to the root zone. Multi-season field trials with the Cuu Long Rice Research Institute (CLRRI), spanning four crops from 2024 to 2026, show why the technology is catching on: seed rates fall by at least 50%, nitrogen fertilizer use drops by at least 20%, and the carbon footprint per kilogram of rice produced falls by at least 10%, alongside more uniform stands and greater resilience to pests, disease, and lodging.

Those gains show up in farmers' fields, too. Comparing mDSR adopters with farmers who still broadcast-seed, the project's farm-level adoption study found mDSR fields yielded 6.81 tons per hectare against 6.67 tons for broadcast seeding — a 2.1% advantage — with nitrogen-use efficiency up 1.4% and net income up 2.7% per hectare.”

From CGIAR.