Rainwater Harvesting As a Technological Innovation to Supplying Crop Nutrition through Fertigation

Abstract

Water management in agricultural production is accomplished primarily through a combination of the irrigation and fertilizer. Irrigation couple with fertilizer is the process of supplying fertilizer or nutrients to crops in the irrigation water as a technological innovation in agricultural sector. The interdependence of irrigation and fertilizer has been recognized in most part of the word where irrigated agriculture is practiced. Fertigation become closely linked component in an overall system for water management in agricultural production. The concept of rainwater harvesting in wet season and supplying it to crops through fertigation was introduced as a part a wider theoretical as a technological innovation. Rainwater from the roof of a greenhouse in periodically harvested and stored in torrents for later use. The purpose of this study was to evaluate total volume of rainwater harvesting where as the use of consumptive use to plant red tomato cherry as a source of fertigation in dry and wet season. This research was carried out from January until May 2016 which is located in the green house of Padjadjaran University campus, Jatinangor Sumedang , West Java Indonesia. The results show that rainwater harvesting from greenhouse roofs top and applied it as fertigation in the wet season good enough of consumptive use whole year (wet and dry season) for planted red tomato cherry.