Water Delivery Performance of Canal Irrigation: A Case Study of Chalakudy River Diversion Scheme
Journal of Agricultural Engineering (India)
The role of irrigation is important in mitigating the challenges involved in food production unde... more The role of irrigation is important in mitigating the challenges involved in food production under the changing climate scenarios. Adequacy and equity in water distribution are the primary concern regarding the performance of any irrigation scheme. Conveyance efficiency and two adequacy indicators, namely, Relative Water Supply and Adequacy were used to evaluate the performance of Chalakudy River Diversion Scheme (CRDS) located in central Kerala, India, in the present study, Water withdrawal data collected from Irrigation Department, and data collected from field measurements of canal discharge and seepage loss were used in the study. Irrigation requirement of the canal command area was worked out using the FAO’s CROPWAT 8.0 software. The results revealed that the average annual irrigation demand of the CRDS command area is 46.90 Mm3. Measured flow rate through the canal system showed that the flow decreases towards the tail end. Loss of water through seepage from the canal was high...
Journal of the Indian Society of Coastal Agricultural Research
Groundwater is one of the major sources for irrigation and domestic purposes. The groundwater dem... more Groundwater is one of the major sources for irrigation and domestic purposes. The groundwater demand for various purposes is increasing in coastal areas. The population density in the coastal region is high and the health of people depends on the quality of water used. Ponnani, in the Malappuram district, is a thickly populated coastal town of Kerala where the availability of good quality drinking water is lacking. The study was undertaken to analyze the fluctuation of the water table and its effects on salinity intrusion and to understand the suitability of groundwater for drinking and irrigation purposes in the coastal belt of the Tavanur-Ponnani region. Six regions, Tavanur, Nariparambu, Chamaravattom, Purathur, Eswaramangalam and Ponnani are included in the study area. The water level was measured from observation wells in the field at monthly intervals, and samples were collected for water quality analysis during the period 2015 to 2021. The results obtained indicate that there is saline water intrusion in the coastal stretch of Purathur, Padinjarekkara and Ponnani regions of the Bharathapuzha river basin, and both salinity and EC is having an increasing trend in almost all wells during this period. The problem was found to be severe during dry periods (March-May) of the year in the Purathoor and Ponnani regions with salinity and EC rising to about 1800 mg L-1 and 1400 µs cm-1 , respectively in the pre-monsoon period, which can be used for drinking only in the absence of an alternate source. In these areas, the groundwater available during the summer months becomes unsuitable even for irrigation purposes. During the monsoon season (June-November), the problem is less severe. Hence, it is recommended to restrict the use of groundwater at least to a lateral distance of 5 km from the seashore along the banks of the river.
Modelling Techniques for Conjunctive Water Management: A Review
Agricultural Reviews
Optimal allocation of surface water and groundwater is the key factor for conjunctive water manag... more Optimal allocation of surface water and groundwater is the key factor for conjunctive water management. Proper planning is necessary for optimal allocation of water for maximizing crop yield benefits and/or minimizing water quality problems. With the advent of computers, by the late 1960s, computer-aided mathematical models came into use to help decision-makers in planning conjunctive water management. Optimization models were popular in the early decades. Then researchers came to know the advantage of mimicking the situations and analyzing them before arriving at optimal solutions. Thus, simulation models and integrated simulation-optimization models came into existence. Multi-objective models were developed to solve more complicated physical situations. The computational burden of running thousands or lakhs of simulations before getting an optimum solution, generated evolution algorithms like ANN and GA to reduce the running time of models and obtain a more accurate solution. Even...
Water has become a scarce input in agriculture. Reuse of household waste water is helpful in solv... more Water has become a scarce input in agriculture. Reuse of household waste water is helpful in solving water scarcity problems in household agriculture during summer months. Reuse of waste water for garden irrigation should be encouraged in urban and rural households. A study was conducted during the year 2016-2017 at Agronomic Research Station, Chalakudy to assess the water quality of household waste water for reuse in agriculture. Samples were collected from households of different localities and laboratory analysis was conducted to assess different quality parameters. Physio-chemical parameters such as pH, EC, chloride, carbonates, bicarbonates, sodium, potassium, boron, calcium, magnesium, SAR and RSC were analyzed. It was found that all the parameters tested were within the safe limits and water is moderately suitable or suitable for irrigation. Presence of heavy metal such as lead, chromium and nickel was analyzed and found within the permissible limits in kitchen waste water. Observation on quality parameters of kitchen waste water showed that EC, SAR and boron were low, but RSC ranged from low to medium level. In continuation, a further field trial on okra (var. Arka anamika) was conducted using kitchen waste water during the summer season in the year 2016-17. Performance of the crop was compared with the crop irrigated using normal well water. Yield of the crop irrigated using kitchen waste water was 6.20 kg plot-1 while it was only 4.10 kg plot-1 with normal well water. Household kitchen waste water is a very good source of water for irrigating homesteads.
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