Portable Hybrid High Efficiency Irrigation System

Abstract

Agriculture is and will remain the largest employer of workforce and a source of livelihood for the masses. Indus Basin Irrigation System is the world largest irrigation system but on the other hand, it is the least efficient irrigation system (36%). Annually 24 Million Acre Feet water is lost in the field due to inefficient irrigation techniques i.e., flood irrigation and basin irrigation etc. The major audience of this research are small farmers. A Portable Hybrid High-Efficiency Irrigation Systems (HEIS) was purposed and experimentation was conducted on an available farm near Fateh Jang. Results shows that purposed irrigation system is feasible for 33.71% of majority farmers in Pakistan who own less than 2 acers land who can’t afford costly HEIS. The current research envisage demonstrating a portable and hybrid HIES comprising of drip irrigation for orchards and sprinkler irrigation for row crops. The designed and manufactured system was cheap and a well efficient technique to irrigation the Alley cropping. Evapotranspiration(ET) based irrigation system was designed for calculating crop water requirement. Experimental ET calculated by Pan Evaporation has closest values to Penman Equation based on NASA Satellite collected data. The water use efficiency(WEU) of the proposed Hybrid HEIS is 64% in comparison to flood irrigation system. The on field demonstrated portable system work efficiently for irrigating one after another field which makes this system cost effective and in-reach of the local agriculturalists who could not afford expensive HEIS. Integrating Hybrid HEIS with alley cropping was a new concept and dire need of the hour which covers all aspects of irrigating the row crops and trees/orchards as well as it offered beneficial outcomes in terms of efficiency of land and water use, profit, productivity, food security and have positive impact on global environment