Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
due to changes in recovery of proximate components as well as health
benefiting compounds.
7.7 CLIMATE CHANGE WATER MANAGEMENT IN
HORTICULTURAL CROPS
Water availability and its management has now become core issue of re-
search in view of its alarming rate of scarcity. The climate change caus-
ing erratic rainfall behavior and increase the frequency of dry spell. Thus,
effective irrigation management practices need to be identified for island
conditions. The initial investigations on drip irrigation and sprinkler irri-
gation methods showed significant influence of yield parameters of pine-
apple and okra, respectively in islands conditions. However, such kind
of studies needs to be investigated in other horticultural crops for confir-
mations of findings so that these methods can be used for mitigating the
expected changed climatic situations.
7.8 INTEGRATED FARMING APPROACH AND CLIMATE
CHANGE
The scientific reports have amply proved that IFS approach is effective
in mitigating climatic adversaries (Ravishankar, et al., 2007). Horticul-
tural crops are being cultivated in 37,635 ha area (about 77%) of the total
cultivated area in islands, predominated by coconut and arecanut. It de-
picts that the islands have horticultural based farming system. However,
spices, fruits, vegetables, flowers (on upland) and rice (low land), fodder
(on embankments) and fish component (in ponds) are found in this system.
Intercropping of spices has given an additional return of Rs. 9299 and Rs.
29,428 from 0.05 ha of land under arecanut + black pepper and coconut
+ ginger systems respectively. An additional employment of 40 mandays
was also generated under intercropping system compared to monocrops.
The climate change phenomena will affect the selection of crops and their
productivity in IFS system. Thus, efforts are required to see the possi-
ble threats to the existing IFS systems in islands from expected climate
change. The research on fresh water and marine pond water based IFS
models showed some hope that sea water as well as rain water flooded ar-
