Irrigation water plays an important role for crop cultivation. Irrigation waters from rivers depend on river flow, lithology, land use patterns, and other anthropogenic activities. We provide here a new assortment for the evaluation of river water quality for irrigation purposes using the Tamiraparani river in India as an example. Physicochemical parameters with sodium absorption ratios (SAR—0.14 to 9.23 meq L−1), sodium percentage (Na%—10.15 to 85.38 meq L−1), residual sodium carbonate (RSC—0.32 to 5.64 meq L−1), potential salinity (PS—0.5 to 7.1 meq L−1), and permeability index (PI—12.5 to 89.7 meq L−1) attest excellent water quality for irrigation except for a few locations in the estuarine region. In addition were the results plotted against USSL (C1S1 to C2S2 class) and Wilcox diagrams confirming >90 % covers under an “Excellent to good” category whereas <10 % on estuarine regions fall under “doubtful to unsuitable” (C3S3 class) nature due to a high salt content. The influence of anthropogenic activity appeared at some location (Tirunelveli and Tenkasi) with high RSC (2.5 to 5.6 meq L−1) and PS (4.2 to 6.4 meq L−1) and subsequent dilution factors in the downstream maintain a water quality suitable for irrigation.
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