Improved Irrigation Practices for Higher Agricultural Productivity: A Review

Technological innovations will leads to meet the present and future challenges of agriculture sector. Water is one of important natural resource, since time immemorial, also acted as catalyst during Green Revolution and helped India achieve self-sufficient status in food grain production. Fresh water is only 2.6% of the total water resources of the world has to be utilized efficiently. Inspite of coverage under irrigation in India and phenomenal growth in production from irrigated area, water use efficiency remains very low as irrigation water is lost during conveyance and application. Prevalent irrigation methods used in agriculture are primarily based on gravity based flow. Surface Irrigation methods viz., Land configuration, Laser levelling and Cablegation can increase production and can save 33% of water. Likewise sprinkler and drip Irrigation practices can also increase both productivity and water saving by 70-90%. The modern methods of irrigation (sprinkler, drip and micro-sprinkler) are becoming increasingly popular with application efficiencies as high as 90 to 95% when compared to 50 to 60% in conventional irrigation methods. Whereas irrigation practices like Pre-irrigation, hydrogel led to significant increase the yield levels by 36% and water saving by 27%. At present, the area under micro-irrigation is only very less when compared to large rain fed area in India. So in order to increase the higher agricultural productivity, we have to shift towards the latest innovative methods as compared to traditional methods of irrigation.