Journal of Ecosystem & Ecography
Open Access

Abstract

Artificial application of water to soil or crop is known as irrigation. The increased competition for water between agricultural, industrial and urban consumers creates the need for continuous improvement of irrigation practices in commercial vegetable production. At present, the efficiency of the irrigation systems adopted is less than 30%. The design of study was descriptive research. To know the status of micro-irrigation, review was collected by evaluating the research work done on micro-irrigation in vegetables. With the use of surface and sub-surface irrigation methods, ground level of water is depleting day by day in India and Punjab. In Punjab, 110 blocks out of 142 blocks were under dark zone of water. In case of vegetables, more number of irrigation is required due to more number of harvests. In the last decade, micro-irrigation technologies are very helpful to enhance the profit of farmers by improving the water use efficiency. Major micro-irrigation technologies are drip irrigation and sprinkler irrigation. The results reveal that micro irrigation is a water saving technique, reduces the energy use; increasing yield and quality of crops, reduce weed problems, soil erosion and cost of cultivation in labour-intensive operations in tomato, chilli, brinjal, capsicum, cucumber and sweet potato etc. It improves the water use efficiency by reducing the water losses and evapo-transipiration losses from fields. Farmers did not adopt micro-irrigation technologies due to complex practices, lack of knowledge, problem of dripper clogging and high initial investments. It can be concluded that there is need to promote these technologies by organizing camps at farmer field/block level or by providing subsidy to farmers or by creating awareness about declining water table to farmers so that farmers should adopt micro-irrigation technologies which helps to improve the water table of soil.

Biography

Kamalpreet Kaur is currently a student of Ph.D program in which she is specializing in Extension Education at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana. She will complete her Doctorate by June 2017. She has done her Bachelor of Sciences in Agriculture with Agronomy as an elective and Master’s in Agricultural Extension Education.