Paddy Cultivation

Rice is the staple food of Sri Lanka. The Department of Census and Statistics records that paddy is grown as a wetland crop in all districts, on land estimated at about 708,000 hectares. The Department of Agriculture states that rice farming provides a livelihood for 2.1 million farmer families across the island.

The crop is old. An FAO study describes paddy as the traditional crop of Sri Lanka, in cultivation for the last 2,500 years. Over that time farmers selected a wide range of cultivars suited to different soils and climates. In the dry zone they also built tanks, the reservoirs that store rainwater for the fields. Rice research today is led by the Rice Research and Development Institute of the Department of Agriculture.

Paddy is grown in two seasons that follow the two monsoons. The Department of Census and Statistics defines Maha as the season of the north-east monsoon, from September to March of the following year. Yala runs from May to the end of August. A crop belongs to the season in which it is sown and harvested.

FAO describes Maha as the major season and Yala as the minor one, with the cropping calendar based on the pattern of rainfall. Not all paddy land is cultivated in every season, and the department gives shortage of water as one of the reasons. At Batalagoda in Kurunegala district, the Department of Agriculture records, an old irrigation tank was improved in 1902. The assured supply of water allowed paddy to be grown there continuously in both seasons.

In the dry zone, paddy depends on stored rainwater. FAO lists the Cascaded Tank-Village System of Sri Lanka as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System, a status dated from 2017. The system is a connected series of tanks set one after the other on a natural drainage line. Each tank is formed by an earthen dam across the valley. Excess water spills from a higher tank to the one below, and a sluice releases water to the paddy fields.

FAO states that the system evolved over nearly two millennia, and that the first large reservoir built in recorded history, Abayawewa, dates from the 3rd century BC. Village culture grew around the tank. Pal kavi are poems recited at night in the watch hut to protect the fields from wild animals, and nelun kavi are recited by women while weeding.

An FAO study reports that selection over two millennia produced about 2,800 rice cultivars in Sri Lanka, adapted to drought, floods, salinity, low temperatures and soils high in iron. It also records that newer high-yielding varieties gradually replaced them, until indigenous varieties covered only about 5 percent of the paddy acreage.

Some are still grown. FAO lists Suwandel, Rathdel, Kaluheenati, Kuruluthuda and Pachchaperumal among the traditional varieties that farmers in the tank villages continue to cultivate. A University of Peradeniya study published in 2014 measured the grain of 21 traditional varieties, including Suwandel and Kalu Heenati. Suwandel had the shortest kernel in the study, at 3.6 mm. The authors noted that indigenous rice varieties have considerable demand in local and international markets.

The Rice Research and Development Institute stands at Batalagoda, Ibbagamuwa, in Kurunegala district. The Department of Agriculture records that the government acquired the land in 1929. Rice research was later moved there from Mahailluppallama, where the paddy fields had no assured supply of water.

In 1952 the Batalagoda farm was named the Central Rice Breeding Center, and research stations at Ambalanthota, Benthota, Bombuwela, Labuduwa, Samanthurei, Paranthan and Murunkan were attached to it. It was renamed the Rice Research and Development Institute in 1993. The institute releases new rice varieties and introduces improved production methods to farmers. Its breeding programme uses both traditional varieties and lines introduced from the International Rice Research Institute.