Drip Irrigation: A promising Approach For Horticulture Crops

By: Dr. Hemant Kumar, Asstt. Editor-ICN

KANPUR: Land and water are basic needs of agriculture and economic development of any country. Among all inputs required for food production, water is the most vital one. This precious resources facing competition from industry.

Domestic use are crop production beside other uses. Although India has largest irrigation network but its irrigation efficiency is less than forty per cent.

About 63 per cent of the net area sown in rainfed and around 37 per cent is irrigated. It is necessary to economics the use of water for agriculture to bring more area under irrigations reduce the cost per hectare of irrigation and increase the productivity. This can be achieved only by introducing advanced method of irrigation like drip irrigation.

Drip irrigation has to play a significant role to achieve not only higher productivity and water use efficiency (WUE) but also to have sustainability in crop production.

Drip irrigation is an efficient method of providing irrigation water directly into the soil at the root zone of the plants and permits the irrigation to limit the watering closely to the crop to most the water requirement.

A well designed drip irrigation system supplies water at low rate under pressure to keep soil moisture with in desired range for plant growth and offers many advantages to growers of fruits, vegetables, flowers and other crops. It is also known as trickle irrigation or micro irrigation.

Parts of drip irrigation:

A typical drip irrigation system has-

1. Dripper
2. Distribution lines and fittings
3. Control head system
4. Fertilizers tank
5. Filter system

Types of drip irrigation:

It is mainly two types:

Surface method:

It this method, the drip lateral is laid along with the row of the crop on the soil surface and the drippers are installed as per the lay out and design. This system is useful for short duration crops and can be rolled back when not required.

Sur surface method:

In this method, the drip lateral is laid 45-60cm below the soil surface to avoid any damage during inter cultural operations. The online drippers are fitted with the help of microtube on the surface near the tree as per lay out of the system. It is generally preferred in semi permanent/ permanent installations particularly for orchards.

Scope:

With the present system of irrigation, even after tapping and utilizing all the water resources of our country only about 50% of the total area can be brought under irrigation. To bring more area under irrigation, drip irrigation is an appropriate answer particularly for horticultural crops. As the land and water recourse are constant, the drip irrigation can play a more significant role in increasing water use efficiency. Besides, it also permit the use of fertilizers, patricides and other soluble chemicals along with irrigation water and is a major component of precision farming.

In India about 2,60,000ha land area is presently under drip irrigation. With drip irrigation it is possible to save about 50-70% of water and yield can be increased by about 10-30% over conventional methods, (Table-1). High yields in different horticultural crops like grape, sapota, mango, banana, guava, coconut, pomegranate, orange and arecanut have been obtained by using drip irrigation. In India drip irrigation industry is growing at an average of 40% per annum. 

Table 1: Benefits of drip irrigation over traditional method crop 

Vegetable crops

Area of implementation:

This system can be adopted in the following areas: with good results:

• Water scarcity area
• Coastal zones
• Hills and semi arid zones
• Fruits and vegetables growers in different parts of country
• Well irrigated areas, which constitute more than 1/3rd of irrigated area of country
• High water table salt affected soils
• Cultivable wasteland by planting trees

Challenge:

• Roughly 100 million small holder farmers in India live on less than 1 a day and 500 million are part of small farmers families.
• Modern irrigation technologies have catered to lagge farmer with fields of 4 ha or larger, with no affordable solution for small farmers.
• India is a water score country, accounting for 16 per cent of the total human population but less than 4 per cent of the world’s water resources. The arrual potential natural ground water recharge from rainfall in India is about 342.43km3, which is 8.56% of total annual rainfall of the country. The annual potential ground water recharge augmentation from caral irrigation system is about 89.46km3. The share of water available for agriculture is declining fast and small land holder are the first to be affected by these water shortages.

Promotional policies:

Some of the policies measures need to be taken for their promotions are:

• Motivation of all the potential users of the system
• Bringing down the cost by subsidizing the equipment 
• Supply of standard materials
• Development of maintenance schedule and appropriate trainers training programme
• Affordable drip Irrigation Technology Intervention (ADITI) programme in India started in 1997.

ADITI kit designed for a range of crops and are quite suitable for small and mariginal farmers. These kit are applicable in a wide range of plot size varing from 20m2 to 1000m2 with price. Verging from RS 250 to Rs. 4000. Divisible and available in convenient package which the farmers can install and begin with one unit and expert it later at their convenience.  

Advantage:

• Saving of water and energy 
• Improvement in productivity and quality of produce
• Reduction in labour and operational cost
• It allows the use of water soluble fertilizers more effectively with maximum efficiency 
• Checks the growth of weeds
• It reduce the hazards of over irrigation 
• It reduces soil compaction
• Reduce leaching and run off loss of water and nutrients
• Foliage remain dry thus reducing the risk of diseases
• It provide uniform growth and reduces harvesting time
• Reduces ground water pollution

Disadvantage:

In the application of drip irrigation system following constraints come in the way:

• High initial cost
• Frequent clogging of emitters i.e. It requires frequent maintainace
• Lack of skilled mar power
• Damage from rodents and astray animals 
• Non- availability of quality materials
• Lake of timely and after sale service

Water is the main constraint in the development of agriculture. Therefore, it is necessary to adapt efficient irrigation methods that are economically viable, technically feasible and socially acceptable.

Drip irrigation come under this category especially for wide spaced high, strawberry and commercial crops like flowers for all crops in the country is only 2,60,000 ha. Therefore, there is great prospect for the rapid expansion of the area under drip irrigation in the coming years. But, to extent it use will require detailed and phased plans by government and manufactures and determination on the part of the farmers.