Effect of Cut-Soiler on Drainage of Saline Groundwater in Haryana, India

Farmers in the dryland regions of Northern India irrigate farmlands with high-salinity groundwater and salinity accumulation causes extensive damage to cultivated agricultural crops, thereby reducing crop productivity. The authors have been standardizing irrigation technologies using saline groundwater for sustainable crop production in Hisar, Haryana, India. The main objective of this study was to quantify the field-scale salinity reduction effect of cut-soiler (CS)-constructed preferential shallow subsurface drainage (PSSD), which refers to drainage mechanisms in which saline groundwater flow is mainly associated with the subsurface drainage network that was built by CS. For this purpose, the groundwater level and electrical conductivity were monitored fortnightly, and the volume of drained saline groundwater was estimated. Furthermore, electrical prospecting was conducted to obtain the resistivity distribution, and a higher resistivity was recorded near the CS drainage lines. Groundwater observations in the subplot quantitatively revealed that CS removed shallow saline groundwater. It was found that the PSSD resulted in a saline groundwater reduction ranging from 54 to 324 m3 and an increase in resistivity exceeding 3.0 Ωm. Thus, CS can contribute to a reduction in saline groundwater.