Water productivity of wheat crop with different sowing methods under drip irrigation

The need for judicious and economical use of scarce water resources for sustainable agriculture is becoming increasingly important day by day due to constantly escalating water shortages. Various water management technologies and techniques for improving water productivity are being promoted by the Water Management wing of Agriculture Department Punjab, Pakistan at the farm level. There is, however, a huge gap in the amount of water being applied and actual irrigation requirements. The excessive use of water is required to be curtailed by modernizing application methods and scheduling the irrigation on scientific basis. In this regard, various studies are being carried out at Water Management Research Farm (WMRF), Renala Khurd. The WMRF is being used to evaluate, indigenize, and demonstrate improved water management technologies and techniques. The same will help in obtaining accurate information on their impacts and economic returns per unit volume of water i.e. water productivity. This study has been conducted to evaluate water productivity. The factors causing variations in crop water productivity are identified and the scope to enhance food production via refining water productivity is discussed. The wheat crop was sown in the year 2019-20 at WMRF to estimate its Water Productivity. For this purpose, 4 different treatments were suggested for the water productivity experiment. Sowing systems adopted were by broadcasting and drill sowing manually and mechanically. In this regard, T1 wheat seed was manually broadcasted, and surface irrigation (Border) was applied. Sowing for T2 was done by mechanical seed drill. T3 and T4 treatments were applied, and a seed drill was used for sowing on bed furrow. Drip irrigation method was applied for T2, T3 and T4. The results of experiments conducted at WMRF Renala Khurd shows the evidence in Water Productivity difference for the wheat crop. The variation in Water Productivity for different treatments was quite noticeable from these experimental results. In T1 the Water Productivity was 1.08kg/m3 against the plot yield of 98.25kg by the application of flood irrigation, vol. of H2O used is 65% higher than T2 with drip irrigation. T3 and T4 treatments show low yield results following Water productivity values. In T3 the Water productivity was 1.26kg/m3 against the plot yield of 74.17kg and in T4 the Water Productivity was 0.97kg/m3 and the plot yield was 62.16kg. The yield in T3 and T4 were reduced as compared to T2 which was 82.34kg against the Water Productivity 1.40kg/m3 by using drip irrigation. It revealed that water productivity is achieved better in drill sowing on flat land irrigated with a drip system. The volume of water consumed in flood irrigation is 64% more than drip irrigation. The experiment shows that line sowing of wheat crop irrigated with drip irrigation is more viable from a water-saving point of view. Farmer should be motivated for drill sowing of wheat. For the better production of wheat crop drip system should be installed to get efficient water consumption. published by the Journal of Biodiversity and Environmental Sciences | JBES