Rice Fertilizer Schedule by Target Yield, in Bags per Hectare

A general plan is a starting point, not a soil test. It assumes an average irrigated lowland field. Your own soil may hold more of one nutrient and less of another. So let a leaf color chart adjust the urea, and test the soil before next season.

Every bag here is a 50 kg bag, and every rate is per hectare. For a smaller lot, multiply by its size in hectares. A quarter hectare takes a quarter of each number.

Choose your target yield and maturity group

The yield you aim for sets how much nutrient the crop must take up. So pick a target you have reached before on the same field, not the best harvest you have heard about. Then check the seed bag for the variety's days to maturity, or look it up in our rice varieties finder.

The plan sets three targets for inbred rice: 3 to 4, 5 to 6 and 7 to 8 tons per hectare. Hybrid rice gets its own plan for 6 to 7 tons. Each target then splits by maturity into 100 to 110 days, 111 to 120 days and 121 to 130 days. Longer varieties get their top dressings later, because they reach tillering and panicle initiation later.

Organic matter and the seedbed come first

The schedule starts before transplanting. Return the straw from your last crop, about one ton for every ton of target yield. Plow it in 30 days before transplanting so it has time to rot. Then, two weeks before transplanting, spread 10 bags of chicken manure or vermicompost and mix it into the mud.

Add zinc only where the soil lacks it. The sign is dusty brown spots on the upper leaves of stunted plants, 2 to 4 weeks after transplanting. For a mild shortage, use 0.5 kg of zinc sulfate on a 400 square meter seedbed. A severe one gets 2 kg. Our page on micronutrients for rice covers zinc in full.

Rice fertilizer schedule for 3 to 4 tons per hectare

This is the lightest plan, with one basal dose and one top dressing, for fields that usually give 60 to 80 cavans of 50 kg.

Rice fertilizer schedule for 5 to 6 tons per hectare

Here the urea splits into two top dressings, the first at tillering and the second near panicle initiation. For the basal dose, you can use either 14 14 14 or 16 20 0.

For 7 to 8 tons per hectare

For hybrid rice, 6 to 7 tons per hectare

The hybrid plan uses 16 20 0 for the basal dose. Note that for 100 to 110 day hybrids, the basal window closes earlier, at 10 DAT.

What the bags add up to

How to apply each dose

• Mix the basal dose into the mud during the final harrowing or by 14 DAT, so it sits where the young roots grow.
• Keep the first dose light on nitrogen. Only about 30 percent of the season's nitrogen goes in the first application.
• Top dress into a shallow 2 to 3 cm of water, and close the outlets so the fertilizer stays in your paddy.
• Spread in the afternoon, after 3 PM, because cooler air means less nitrogen lost as gas.
• If you practice alternate wetting and drying, pause it on fertilizer days.

Adjust the schedule with a leaf color chart and NPK Plus

The urea rows are the part most worth adjusting. From 14 DAT, read a leaf color chart every 7 days. If 6 or more of 10 leaves read below the critical value, the crop needs nitrogen, even if the schedule says wait. If the leaves stay dark green, you can hold a dose and save the bag.

Before you buy, run your plan through NPK Plus, the fertilizer calculator in anee.io. Pick palay and your bags, and it adds up the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium per hectare. Then it holds them against the usual rate for rice. If something comes out short or too much, ask Anee, the smart farm technician, what to change.

Once the plan is set, put it on your cropping calendar. In anee.io, every dose gets its date from each lot's own transplanting or sowing day. A lot planted a week late gets its urea a week late too.

Questions about the rice fertilizer schedule