Enhancing Water Use Efficiency through various agricultural water management interventions in rainfed and irrigated areas

Current farmers’ yields in rainfed areas are lower by two to four folds than the yield from researcher’s managed or commercial plots. In order to meet the food demand and reduce poverty, there is an urgent need to unlock the potential of rainfed agriculture and also need to enhance the water use efficiency in irrigated areas. There is huge extend of rainfed area which receives moderate to good (800-1100 mm) rainfall but cultivate single crop either in monsoon or in post-monsoon period despite having potential to cultivate two crops in a year. Long-term experiments conducted at ICRISAT heritage watershed showed that rainfed areas has huge untapped potential which could be harnessed through appropriate soil, nutrient, water and crop management practices. We emphasize that such long-terms experiments need to be continued to test several research hypothesis and to refine rainfed technologies with upcoming climatic change and other challenges. Moreover farmers’ participatory research experiments need to be strengthened along with strategic research to scale-out available rainfed technologies. Water use efficiency in irrigated areas is also poor and large scope exists to enhance through improved irrigation methods and proper irrigation scheduling. Over irrigation and heavy use of chemical fertilizers has already been declined the agricultural productivity in irrigated areas. Introducing decision support system such as “Water Impact Calculator” for irrigation scheduling along with proper irrigation method can help in saving blue water and enhance water use efficiency. In this activity we will be focusing strategic research to enhance green and blue water availability at field and watershed scale and for its efficient utilization through various improved technique towards sustainable intensification in rainfed and irrigated areas. The major activities in 2015 are 1) establish the amount and blend fertilizer input required to fill the yield gap under rainfed and irrigation conditions, in our hertiage site; 2) quantify water use efficiency of crops under improved irrigation methods and proper irrigation scheduling compared to traditional practices and 3) developing and validating a decision support system such as “Water Impact Calculator” for irrigation scheduling along with proper irrigation method for saving blue water and enhance water use efficiency.