About 55% of the country’s rice production occurs in the Mekong River Delta (MD) (Tran and
Dinh, 2014). Correspondingly, about 13 million tons of rice straw
from 60% ofthe rice straw produced in the MD are surplus. They are
left to be burned in the field or considered as waste material while
most of the remaining 40% is collected for mushroom production,
livestock fodder production, or for use as mulching material. In the
MD, about 90% of the paddy is harvested by combine harvesters
(Nguyen et al., 2013) and the rice straw left spread out in the wet
field becomes a main constraint in the their efficient collection