A Study on the Optimum Water Use in Drip Irrigation System

This study was undertaken to determine the optimum water use in drip irrigation system. Drip irrigation is the practice where water is applied at a rate almost equal to the consumptive use of the plant. In an average irrigation system, the losses of water take place in the form of deep percolation, conveyance and evaporation. The monthly average evapo-transpiration of bananas was found 3.969 mm/day at Kalyani, district Nadia. The average monthly evaporation obtained for Kalyani, Nadia was found 1.9775 mm/day. It was also observed that the lowest (0.99 mm/day) and highest (3.68 mm/day) values of evaporation occurred at Kalyani in December and May, respectively. For banana (Musa spp.) spacing 2m x 2m, actual water used by the plant for a crop season was found to be 4686.287 l/plant. It was found that dripper with discharge rate of 0.5 l/hr is most suitable for banana cultivation at Kalyani, Nadia. The final water saving upto 45.62 % is possible with the proper management of the system we adopted. In our present research, we have observed some dissimilarity in values of soil evaporation that occurred when pan evaporation exceeded 4.5 mm/day. So it can further study for more efficient procedures to calculate the evaporation from the soil surface.