UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
DEPARTMENT BULLETIN No. 1387 
Washington, D. C. 
March, 1926 
EXPERIMENTS IN RICE CULTURE AT THE BIGGS RICE FIELD STATION IN 
CALIFORNIA 
By Jexkin W. Jon~e3, Associate Agronomist and Superintendent, Biggs Rice Field 
Station, Office of Cereal Investigations, Bureau of Plant Industry 
CONTENTS 
Page 
Introduction 1 
Environmental conditions .. .. 3 
Soil .. 3 
Temperature 3 
Rainfall __ 4 
Wind.., 5 
Evaporation 6 
Experiments on the control of water grass and 
its varieties. 7 
Methods used 7 
Experiments on immediate submergence 
after seeding 7 
Comparison of air and water temperatures 11 
Experiments on submergence immediately 
after the rice has emerged 12 
Spring plowing and disking of stubble land 
compared 14 
Page 
Experiments on the control of water grass and 
its varieties — Continued. 
Experiments on rate of seeding and method 
of irrigation 16 
Experiments on seed-bed preparation 18 
Rate-of-seeding experiments 19 
Effect of variety 19 
Yield data 20 
Effect of continuous cropping on rice yields 21 
Varietal experiments 23 
Classes of rice. 23 
Varieties grown on tenth-acre plats 24 
Varieties grown on small increase plats 2S 
Varieties following green-manure crops in 
1924 29 
Nursery experiments 30 
Summary 36 
INTRODUCTION 
Water grass | EcMnocTiloa crusgalli) is reported to be present in sev- 
eral important rice-producing countries of the world, but apparently 
in none of these countries has this grass become so troublesome as in 
California. This grass was present in California when rice growing 
first began, and in spite of efforts to keep it under control it has 
spread from year to year. 
During the early growth of the rice industry in California the three 
factors most conducive to the rapid spread of water grass were plenty 
of available new land, tenant farming, and the method of irrigation. 
New land, land which had never been seeded to rice, was easily 
available, and because of the high acre yields obtained on such land 
it was eagerly leased by tenants, who often farmed large acreages 
and usually gave little attention to the rapid spread of water grass. 
When the land was fouled tenants moved to other new lands. " The 
method of irrigation in use at that time also was favorable to the 
rapid spread of water grass. This consisted of irrigating and draining 
the land at frequent intervals until 30 days after the rice had emergecT 
The land was then submerged about 6 inches, and the water was held 
at about that depth until the fields were drained for harvest. Under 
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