One nursery bed was prepared to produce seedlings
for two field trials as follows: The soil was ploughed,
puddled with water, and leveled. The puddle mud was
later allowed to settle down and the excess water was
removed. The nursery area was divided into beds to
accommodate various seed treatments. Each bed was 2.5 m in width and 4.0 m in length. NPK was applied at the rate of 5-5-5 g/m2 to nursery area. Prior to sowing into nursery beds, rice seeds were treated with Integral at two concentrations (2.2×108 and 2.2×109 cfu/mL) separately. Carbendazim was used as the standard chemical control.