Water Conservation Through ICT

Abstract

Agriculture worldwide has a pivotal role in survival of the human and animal race. In the Indian context, agriculture occupies a central role which can be observed by the fact that around 50% of the population is involved in agriculture and allied activities for their survival. Such extensive cultivation of land by a massive population has resulted in making India the second largest farm output producer worldwide. At the time of Independence, almost all of the agriculture practiced in India was rainfed. But with the passage of time, people have become aware about irrigation technologies which reduces the dependence on rain and increases farm output by a considerable amount. In this thesis, we compare between two irrigation techniques, surface and microirrigation, and establish that pursuing precision agriculture with the inclusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), we can increase irrigation efficiencies by a considerable amount. We also compare the results with different combinations of organic and inorganic fertilizers with the two irrigation techniques, which is a novel attempt of its kind in this area. The thesis also establishes the fact that by using Information and Communication technologies with Micro-irrigation, a significant amount of water saving accompanied by an increase in yield when compared with other traditional methods, is obtained.