Establishment of a Rice Tiller Number Prediction Model Using Soil Compaction and Days After Transplanting

Soil compaction has a real effect on rice growth in the Mekong Delta. The correlation between soil compaction and rice growth (tiller number and plant height) in a paddy field in An Giang province was evaluated in the 2020 Winter-Spring and Summer-Autumn crops using the Pearson's correlation test. The research results show that soil compaction 0-20 cm from the soil surface has a positive correlation with rice tiller number, while the effect on plant height is non-significant. Therefore, a prediction model for rice tiller numbers is constructed using the Curve Fitting application in Matlab software. The obtained prediction models can effectively predict the number of rice tillers from the value of the 0-20 cm soil layer compaction at times under 40 DAT in the two studied crops. This study provides the optimal value of soil compaction (about 229.8 and 337.6 kPa in these crops), which can aid in the utilization of soil tillage for paddy rice cultivation by farmers.