The objective of modern on-farm irrigation should be to use the available natural resources, especially water and energy as efficiently as possible, reasonable economic viability and with low/minimal impact on environment.
Besides the proven advantages of micro irrigation technologies like enhanced crop water productivity, increased crop yields and profits, improved quality of production, increased fertilizers use efficiency, reduced costs on weed control and environmentally responsible, there are some bottlenecks like need for higher management skills, high investment cost for large-scale application of the technology.
The responsibility for the researchers, manufacturers, suppliers is therefore to provide practical and useful technology to the farmers with full services including agronomical aspects. Farmers must understand the operation and maintenance of the system fully so as to harness the potential benefits of the micro irrigation. The success or failure of a micro irrigation system depends to a large extent on careful selection, through planning accurate design and effective management.
The innovative irrigation technology like mobile drip irrigation has the potential to use less energy (by about 45%), less operating pressure (by about 50% kPa), minimum or no losses of water due to accurate application of water (saving achieved is about 20%) and has low investment cost compared to conventional center pivot sprinkler irrigation system.
In view of increasing importance of Micro Irrigation as above, the ICID Asian Regional Conference ( 2009) gave a particular focus on Micro Irrigation.
A Special Session on the subject was coordinated by Dr. T.B.S. Rajput (India). The world wide scenario was highlighted by VPH Felix B. Reinders (South Africa) who chaired the Session. Dr. P. Sonam, Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd. (India) shared his experiences as a co-chairman with all the participants and touched upon important dimensions of micro irrigation technologies. A total of seven (7) papers were presented in the session that covered a wide range of micro irrigation technologies, polices policy and success stories related to India in particular and South Asian region in general. One paper specifically discussed the prospects of micro irrigation and mechanization in rice production. The use of expert system in planning in efficient use of water through micro irrigation came up in the session.
Three key issues related to food security indices are (i) growing population, (ii) constraints related to productivity and production of food articles and (iii) physical and economical access to adequate nutritious food. Though successful application of micro irrigation at micro-level stand well established, upscaling to the extent desired is yet a dream to come true. The key policy issue that seems to hinder the water management worldwide are (i) rational pricing of water; (ii) technological gap and (iii) sufficient awareness.
Some major recommendations emerged from the Special Session include:
Application and standardization of sensor technologies and automation, not only in orchards but also in grain crops, measurement of soil properties, soil moisture dynamics and capacitance measurement at field level with micro irrigation.
Micro irrigation is a complex combination of technology and science and thus awareness creation and capacity building are critical at various hierarchical level i.e. from farmers to the top policy planners.
Efforts should be made to develop the low cost automatic micro irrigation system for 'resource poor' farmers in different country-settings. Documenting success stories as to how micro irrigation improves quality and yield, save water, labour and energy, minimize input losses of fertilizer and pesticides and maximize profit could help the uptake of the technology. Scope and prospects of micro irrigation include drip Irrigation, bioplastics, Mobile Drip Irrigation (MDI) and Precision Mobile Drip Irrigation (PMDI). Their large scale adoption at field level is feasible. Successful Irrigation strategies for popularizing Micro Irrigation in other parts of the world, establishing a sustainable, profitable and quality food production system for the farmers are other aspects that require attention.
M. Gopalakrishnan Secretary General, ICID IRRIGATION AND DRAINAGE