Jamshedpur : JUSCO recently provided a much-needed fillip to water conservation efforts in a city by setting up two recharge wells to harvest raindrops at Jubilee Park. Now the company has embarked on a project on subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) at Jubilee Park. This is said to be the first such initiative of better use of water resource at a park in Jharkhand. The initiative aims to reduce water usage for green covers by about 60 percent in the park.
Subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) is the irrigation through buried plastic tubes containing embedded emitters located at regular spacings. There are a wide variety of configurations and equipment used, however drip tubes are typically located 38″ to 84″ (134 to 213 cm) apart, and 6 to 10″ (15 to 25 cm) below the soil surface.
Subsurface drip irrigation provides the ultimate in water use efficiency, often resulting in water savings of 25-50 per cent compared to flood irrigation. The use of SDI offers many other advantages for crop production, including less nitrate leaching compared to surface irrigation, higher yields, a dry soil surface for improved weed control and crop health, the ability to apply water and nutrients to the most active part of the root zone, protection of drip lines from damage due to cultivation and other operations, and the ability to safely irrigate with wastewater while preventing human contact.
Jusco�s horticultural department is hopeful to complete in one month of the first phase of the subsurface drip irrigation system on Rose Garden and Moghul Garden stretch.
�One of the main advantages of SDI over other irrigation methods is that it has the potential to be the most efficient irrigation method available today. The word potential is stressed because irrigation efficiency not only depends on the irrigation system itself, but also on its proper design, installation and management.
Only if designed, installed and managed correctly can SDI be more efficient than any other irrigation system. Since the driplines are usually installed in the soil between every other crop row, the system only wets a fraction of the soil volume, compared with other,� said an official.
