?Drip irrigation could boost production?

Drip irrigation could provide an answer to India?s rice production which is increasingly becoming prone to erratic monsoon and rapidly depleting ground water in key growing areas.

Research carried out by micro irrigation major Jain Irrigation Systems (JIS) during the last two years in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh by using drip irrigation in paddy cultivation have shown encouraging results.

?If 10% of rainfed area is brought under drip irrigation, then rice output could increase to 130 million tonne by 2020 from the present around 100 million tonne,? P Soman, senior vice-president, projects, JIS told FE

After harvesting a summer paddy variety IDI45 developed by the Tamil Nadu Agriculture University by using drip irrigation at the research and development station located at Elayamuthur village part of Thiruppur district for the first time recently, scientists at Jain Irrigation have found out substantial savings in terms of water and power in comparison to the conventional flooding system.

Based on the preliminary data generated by JIS scientists, water usage in paddy cultivation using drip irrigation goes down by as much as 66% which correspondingly cuts down power consumption by over 50%.

?We have data which shows that only 36.4 lakh litre of water is used in the paddy field by this method as against more than 90 lakh litre used in conventional paddy cultivation,? Soman said.

The company intends to continue with its field trials over the next three to five years with an aim that a portion of paddy cultivation in water deficient areas comes under drip irrigation.

At present, many states have announced subsidies for farmers for promoting drip irrigation. Andhra Pradesh gives (90%), Tamil Nadu (65%), Gujarat (50%) for the promotion of drip irrigation. At present, drip irrigation is being used for cultivation of sugarcane and horticultural crops over 3.4 million hectare in the country.

India has more than 43.8 million hectare of agricultural land under paddy cultivation which is traditionally grown through flooding. Paddy is traditionally grown in standing water using flood irrigation.

Besides savings on water, scientists have also found out that paddy yield also rises through drip irrigation. While in case of traditional irrigation method the yield is usually around 3.1- 3.2 tonne per hectare while in case of drip irrigation the yield rises to 3.4 tonne per hectare.

However, in case of traditional irrigation, cost of production for paddy comes to around Rs 22,700 per acre while in case of drip irrigation, production cost rises to Rs 57,000 per acre .

?It can take up about three years before we can think of using the technology commercially,? Soman said. He said that farmers would recover the higher cost of drip irrigation by saving on power bills.

Philipines-based International Rice Research Institutes (IRRI) has signed an MoUs with JIS earlier this year for collaborative research and adaptive field trials on paddy using micro irrigation.

India is the world?s second largest rice producer accounting for more than 20% of global production.According to the government data, the rice production was 99.5 million tonne during 2008-09. Due to failure of the monsoon last year, the paddy production in 2009-10 fell by around 14%.