India

In India, perlite has been used very successfully both in athletic fields and now in agricultural field crops.

In the often dry state of Gujarat, farmers face the problem of long dry seasons, and very poor and very scarce water for irrigation, and very expensive chemicals. Following up on what they had heard being done in Brazil and in Israel, several experiments were conducted in the mid 1990's to test the use of a very small amount of very fine perlite in sorghum and rice crops.

About 15 farmers were used in a government sponsored series of test. In each case, the farmers were asked to use perlite only in some fields or rows, so that a comparison between areas treated with perlite and those without could be easily made.

After the first season, the results seemed very good. Germination in the perlite areas was 100%; the fields were "thick" with crops and yields were improved.

Here are a few of the comments made by those testing and using perlite in their field crops:

• "The function (of perlite) was remarkable in places where water holding capacity of the soil is poor and the farm is rainfed"
• Twenty-one out of 37 farmers had increases in productivity of more than 10% with crop such as cotton, tur, and caster; these farmers felt the improvements were caused by the addition of perlite.
• Ten out of the 37 farmers had increases in productivity of more than 10% and up to 50%.
• Four farms had yields approaching a 100% increase in yield.