Paper Details

In the vast rural areas agriculture with its allied sectors is the largest livelihood provider in India. It is alsoa major contributor to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of India. Sustainable technologies are essential for holisticrural agricultural development. Almost 60 percent of the rural farmers in India are characteristically cultivators of smallplots, cultivating land less than 1.0 hectare in size and are facing severe constraints of too little access to advancedtechnologies and productive farming technologies. Irrigation sector being the largest consumer of water resources, withthe ever-increasing demand for food and fibers the selection and adoption of appropriate irrigation technologies by thesmall and marginal farmers for greater sustainable production and better resource utilization cannot be overlooked. Inthis context, the present study aimed at examining the applicability of ‘custom-made porous capsule assembly’ (CPCA)as potential small-scale water-saving irrigation technique. On-farm experimentation on the plants of Green Peas andTomatoes at a farm located at village Jeeva near Dhrangadhara City of Surendranagar District of Gujarat were carriedout by fabricating a ‘custom-made porous capsule assembly’ (CPCA), which was capable of storing up to 8.50 liters ofwater for studying its various aspects for comparison with the farmers’ regular practice of hand watering the basins. Theresults revealed that when compared to basin method of irrigation by farmers’ regular practice of hand watering 55.95% of water saving was possible with CPCA. Whereas the increase in yield of Green Peas with CPCA was 35.90 % andthat for Tomatoes under CPCA was also 8.53 %. The Benefit-Cost ratio for the CPCA was found to be 1.38. The CPCA isquite eco-friendly and if the capsules can be manufactured in large quantity the cost of CPCA can be reducedconsiderably and higher benefits can be attained. The water saving when tied with the improved yield makes the CPCAhighly profitable for the farmers who are facing the problems of water shortages and for those trying to eke a living outof their small land-holdings. The simplicity and the manageability of CPCA can immensely add to an enablingenvironment for farmer adoption. The proposed method has the potential to contribute to poverty alleviation among thesmall farmers and can serve as an effective tool for affordable small-scale irrigated agriculture

Neelkanth J. Bhatt, Rajendra Gatesaniya, Baldev Kanzariya, “Experimental Investigations on Custom-made Porous Clay Capsule Assembly as Water Saving Technology for Small-Scale Farming”, International Journal of Advance Engineering and Research Development (IJAERD), Vol. 4, Issue 9, pp. 285-289, September 2017.