Hydrogel: Promising alternative for water and nutrient management

Abstract

Nowadays water management is considered as one of the major challenges for all countries. It is estimated that by 2030, global water demand is probable to be 50% higher than today and this will lead us towards water scarcity, at the same time agricultural sector used over 70 percent of freshwater in most regions of the world. Among all the cultivated areas in India 60% lands are under dryland condition and 30% area has less rainfall. So, cultivation under shortage of water is a major problem in India. Under such condition, application of hydrogel can be used as an alternative which can reduce the problem of water scarcity. Hydrogels are the network of crosslinked polymer chains which can swell to absorb huge volume of water. Hydrogel releases water and nutrient to the plants when soils around root zone of plants starts to dry up. Application of hydrogel polymer creates a water reservoir near the root zone of plants, improve the capacity of available water to plant, enhances plant growth and increases yield and hence reduces cost of cultivation. Hence, hydrogel plays an important role in modern agriculture.