Soil Moisture Depletion-Based Irrigation Technology for Summer Finger Millet Under Midland Situation of Chhattisgarh Plains

Abstract

The most effective means to conserve water appears to be carefully managed deficit irrigation delivery system. The present study deals with the effective water management practices to deficit irrigation based on different soil moisture depletion level (SMDL) with combination of soil mulch and without mulch to enhance water use efficiency and yield output of finger millet as substitute of summer rice. Finger millet experiments were conducted at research farm of Indira Gandhi Krishi Vishwavidyalaya, Raipur during summer season in 2014, 2015, and 2016 to evaluate two main treatments of moisture conservation (soil mulch and without mulch) with combination of five submain treatments, i.e., 30% SMDL (soil moisture depletion level), 40% SMDL, 50% SMDL, 60% SMDL, 70% SMDL. We also conducted summer rice experiment parallel to assess the technoeconomic comparison with summer finger millet. The result shows that the higher grain yield of finger millet in combination of soil mulch with 60% SMDL gave 23.48 q ha−1 under split plot design. The water use efficiency is also higher in combination of soil mulch with 60% SMDL (6.21 kg ha−1mm−1) as compared with combination of soil mulch with 50% SMDL (6.10 kg ha−1mm−1). On the basis of pooled data of 3 consecutive years, it can be concluded that summer ragi water requirement is 37.5 cm, which can be accomplished by eight numbers of irrigation. It can be concluded that 75.5 cm of water per hectare can be saved if summer rice is replaced by finger millet. The water saving can increase the cultivated area more than three times under summer finger millet as compared with summer rice.