Experimental Studies on Effect of Water and Soil quality on Crop Yield

The dawn of the industrial revolution, forced the mankind to introduce numerous hazardous compounds into the environment at an exponential rate. The hazardous pollutants consist of a variety of organic compounds and heavy metals. These pose serious risks to plant and human health. Indiscriminate dumping of urban and industrial effluents along with solid wastes often lead to toxic accumulation of heavy metals which not only impair soil productivity but also cause health hazards by entering into food chain via soil–plant–animal/human route. In modern economies, soil, air and water are traditionally been used as sites for the disposal of wastes. Supply of good quality irrigation water will decrease in future, as the development of new water supplies will not keep pace with the increasing water needs of industries and municipalities. Thus, irrigated agriculture faces the challenge of using less water and in many cases poorer quality water, to provide food and fibre for an increasing population. The quality of irrigation water plays an important role in agricultural development and requires management for maintaining an optimum salt balance in the root zone for productive agriculture. Irrigation with poor quality water may cause an excessive accumulation of salts in the root zone of soil. This affects crop yield, quality of produce and the choice of crop to be grown. In the present work, experiments were conducted at BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore in order to study the effect of water and soil quality on Maize crop yield. Vrishabavathi command area was considered in the case study. The water in the river is highly polluted and the soil in the command area shows degradation. Four plots of 4x10m were prepared and in two plots, the existing soil was replaced with the soil from the study area. Also for two test plots (red soil plot and brown loamy soil from the Vrishabavathi command area plot), water from Vrishabavathi River was supplied throughout the crop period. Comparisons were made at the end of the harvest. It was observed that yield from the Maize crop grown with river water on the soil from the command area showed a decrease of about 25% compared to that of the yield from the red soil with bore well water.