Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
15.1 INTRODUCTION
Land and water are the two vital natural resources for sustenance of agricultural pro-
duction in any country. Out of these two resources, water is very important, because it
plays a crucial role in maximizing production and productivity of any crop. Because
of a limited water resource, its efficient utilization is basic to the survival of mankind.
Though India is blessed with plenty of water resources, yet the utilizable water for ir-
rigation is being exhausted due to various physiographic constraints, legal constraints
and present method of utilization. Improper irrigation management practice not only
waste scarce and expensive water resources but also decreases crop yield through
salinization and alkalinization [9, 22]. It is necessary to economize the use of water
for agriculture in order to bring more area under irrigation. It is therefore essential
to formulate efficient and economically viable irrigation management strategies in
order to irrigate more area with the existing water resources. This can be achieved by
introducing advanced and sophisticated method of irrigation like drip/micro, sprinkler
and improved water management practices. By the use of these advanced irrigation
methods, a lot of costly irrigation water can be saved which will in other way help in
expanding the irrigation potential, irrigation intensity as well as cropping intensity.
In drip irrigation, water in small quantity but in frequent times is applied to the
root zone of the crop. The root zone application of water eliminates the chances of
water losses due to surface runoff and deep percolation. This consequently enhances
the water application effi ciency. Use of the advanced methods of irrigation like micro
and sprinkler is very limited in India. Although we have about 60.90 million ha land
under irrigation (43% of net sown area) in India, yet only 5% of the irrigated areas
are covered under sprinkler irrigation and only 3.1% are under micro irrigation. Even
a developing country China has been able to bring less area under sprinkler and drip
irrigation, although it has covered large area under other sources of irrigation includ-
ing surface irrigation. Some developed countries like USA and United Kingdom have
achieved about 50% and 95% of total irrigated areas under sprinkler irrigation, re-
spectively. Israel has been able to bring about 73.6% of the total irrigated areas under
micro irrigation. The spread of irrigation by different sources like sprinkler and micro
irrigation/drip irrigation for some selected countries in the world is presented in Table
1 [11].
Presently in India, 7.49 million ha area is cultivated with vegetable crops with an
annual production of 116.03 million tons. It is estimated that, by 2020 AD, the vegeta-
ble demand of the country will be around 135 million tons. To achieve this target, our
attention must be focused on the vertical expansion instead of horizontal expansion
just by increasing the crop area [16]. The working group on horticulture constituted
by the Planning Commission had recommended deployment of hi-tech horticulture
and precision farming for achieving vertical growth in horticulture. As proposed by
National Committee on Plasticulture Applications in Horticulture (NCPAH) - Gov-
ernment of India, the hi-tech interventions in horticultural crops are drip irrigation and
in-situ moisture conservation through plastic mulching [17].
 
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