LAUSR

ABSTRACT Some agricultural areas in Haryana and Punjab, India especially at tail ends suffer from lower crop yields in spite of excellent canal networks. This happens mainly due to less canal supply and inefficient usage of water by upstream farmers. Thus to get good crop yield farmers are forced to pump groundwater. But, it has been observed that pumping is always more than required. Similar trend has also been observed in tube well based irrigated area. The excessive pumping lowers groundwater table sharply. Thus, to mitigate this situation, storage of return flow from irrigation and runoff from farm is contemplated in on farm reservoir (OFR) which is used for irrigation at crucial times so that irrigation efficiency and crop yield could be enhanced. To study this field experiments on a half-acre farm in NIT, Kurukshetra, Haryana having sandy loam soil were conducted during two years i.e. 2013 and 2015 in Kharif season for rice crop. The farm was divided into two sub-farms (namely sub-farm A and sub-farm B). Two different irrigation schemes viz. crop of sub – farm A was irrigated from tube well only whereas sub – farm B crop was irrigated from tube-well as well as OFR so that comparison of water utilization by the crop and its yield could be made. The OFR was designed for capacity of 2 time supplemental irrigation demand for rice crop. The study reveals that the grain production of rice in sub-farm B is higher by 51 kg and 45 kg in the years 2013 and 2015 respectively and water saving of 22,799 l and 14,501 l is also achieved in the respective years.