The Division of Crop Production and Management Research consists of four research groups: Economic Evaluation Group which estimates the trends of farming and carry out administrative evaluation of technology, Farm Management Group which evaluates whether newly developed techniques meet the requirements of farmers, Farm Machinery and System Group which focuses on the development of mechanized work system in large scale rice paddy field, and Field Crop Management group which deals with the research on stable production of crops.
Our main research objective is to reduce the overall paddy rice production cost by more than 40% and to build a sustainable and labor-saving crop rotation system through crop/livestock integration. In order to achieve these, we are developing fundamental technologies for 2 ha large-scale field paddy rice production in the experimental field of Tohoku Agricultural Research Center, conduct demonstration tests with a large-scale management body, and promote the systematization of cultivation technology. Simultaneously, the Economic Evaluation Group is using linear programming method to evaluate the technology by formulating a management model.
The plains in the Sendai area are the main targets for our empirical research. It has been 5 years since the Great East Japan Earthquake has occurred and vast areas have been damaged due to tsunami. There has been significant progress in the establishment of large-area infrastructure as well as several management bodies in the scale of 100 ha. Changes in the paddy fields damaged by the tsunami during the last five years may provide an overview of Japanese paddy field agriculture after 20 years.
We have established 3-6 ha experimental fields in the Sendai plains as shown in the photograph below, and we have developed and demonstrated labor-saving rice-wheat-soybean rotation system and ICT technologies for such large scale compartmental fields.
Experimental field for two-year three-crop rotation system
