A Review on Feasibility of Pressurized Irrigation in Canal Command Area

Abstract

Indian agriculture has made a lot of progress, from the time of draught and famines to self-sufficiency in food production. Water played a major role in this achievement besides high yielding varieties, use of chemical and fertilizers. During last 4-5 decades, major emphasis was given on developing irrigation infrastructure; however there were no much attention given on the efficient utilization of created water resource. This has resulted a wide gap, between potential created and potential utilized. At the end of XII plan, 102.77 M ha was the potential created and 87.23 M ha was the potential utilized. Canal Irrigation Sector is facing a number of challenges as, irregular and inadequate water supply, water logging and salinity, unavailability of water control and measurement structures, non-adoption of irrigation methods, improper working of water user associations. Many researchers are focusing their studies on these issues and trying to find out solution. Here, a brief account of research work done by some of such scientists, which indicated thatpressurized irrigation in command, is a feasible solution to improve the performance.