Amid receding water resources, innovative farming practices offer solutions to mitigate water scarcity and sustain agriculture in the valley

World Water Day is celebrated on 22nd March every year with the aim of raising awareness about its importance in our lives. The theme set by the UN for the year 2024 is ‘Leveraging water for peace’. The theme is spot-on and highly relevant in the present scenario. Access to water is crucial in maintaining peace around us. The shortage of drinking water and water for irrigating crops often triggers conflict within and among communities.
Things may become serious if water resources are not handled properly. The ground reality is that water resources are receding and we see a crisis-like situation in one or the other parts of the world. The case is no different in India and the part we live in. Being an important source of water, glaciers in the Jammu and Kashmir Himalayas are shrinking in volume and splitting due to melting over the years. This, along with changing climatic conditions, necessitates the adoption of water conservation technologies for judicious use of water resources and better water use efficiency.
Agriculture is a major consumer of water, and adopting technologies that help conserve water and increase water use efficiency can help in shaping the future water scenario. Around 70% of the water received from rivers and groundwater is used for irrigating crops. The use of water conservation technologies in raising crops, therefore, can play a vital role in mitigating present and future water crises.
Rice, as we know, is the staple food for the people of Jammu & Kashmir, cultivated over an area of around 2.9 lakh hectares. It consumes a much higher volume of water than the rest of the crops grown here. According to the estimates made by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), irrigated rice receives 34-43% of the total world irrigation water, and for producing one kilogram of rice, around 2500 litres of water are required. In the process of irrigating crops, a good amount of water is lost. From the source to the main field, water losses can be categorized into conveyance losses and field losses.
Water conveyance losses can be minimized to the least by constructing concrete water channels and regularly cleaning the channels. The use of pipes can tremendously help in avoiding conveyance losses. In the main field, losses can be reduced by levelling the land, puddling in rice, scheduling irrigation based on weather, soil moisture, and plant stage, alternate drying and wetting, and IoT-based smart irrigation systems in rice. System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and Direct Seeded Rice (DSR) are other water conservation technologies explored across the globe, including India. SRI, for instance, can save as much as 44% of the water requirement of rice cultivation.
In addition to this, it has other advantages like higher yield than conventional rice, shorter crop duration, bold grains with a bigger size, higher head rice recovery, better soil health by promoting biological activities in the soil, and so on. DSR is also a potential technology for water conservation as it can save as much as 25-35% of irrigation water for raising the rice crop without any compromise on yield. In addition to this, DSR can save 30 to 40 man-days per hectare, which otherwise are utilized for raising nurseries, uprooting seedlings, transportation, and transplanting of seedlings, and so on.
Moreover, DSR technology minimizes methane emissions into the atmosphere and can help in climate change mitigation. The crop matures 7 to 10 days earlier, and unlike puddled rice, soil structure is not destroyed in DSR. Due to saving on labour, the profitability of DSR is higher than conventional transplanted rice. Taking into consideration the receding water resources in the Kashmir valley, the Mountain Research Center for Field Crops (MRCFC)-SKUAST-Kashmir situated at Khudwani is consistently engaged in research on conservation technologies, including water conservation. The centre has support from the All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP-Rice) and also from the Directorate of Research SKUAST-Kashmir. The centre has succeeded in standardizing the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) for Kashmir conditions and is generating data on other resource conservation technologies in rice, including Direct Dry Seeded Rice (DDSR), over the past few years. These technologies can help in tackling any future challenges with regard to water availability for agriculture.
In crops other than rice, reducing conveyance losses, levelling of land, strong bunds, use of drip/sprinkler irrigation, and mulching are explored as water-saving practices and technologies. The slogan ‘more crop per drop’ particularly fits well with the drip irrigation system, which is a type of micro-irrigation, as it delivers water slowly in the root zone. The aim is to substantially decrease water losses and improve water use efficiency. Additionally, fertilizers can also be applied through drip irrigation, a process called ‘fertigation’. Drip irrigation has emerged as a multi-advantageous irrigation system and is widely used nowadays, particularly in high-value crops like fruits, vegetables, and spices, including our saffron, and ornamental plants. It not only saves water but also helps in increasing fertilizer use efficiency due to the localized application of fertilizer in the root zone. It can be used even in sloppy and unleveled lands. It also helps in conserving soil by reducing soil erosion. This method of irrigation is particularly relevant under rainfed conditions where judicious use of harvested rainwater plays a crucial role in the survival of crops and avoiding water stress, ultimately leading to higher yields.
In the future, we are going to see the application of these technologies on a large scale. Fundamentally, the selection of crops and their varieties as per the availability of water resources, scheduling irrigation as per crop requirement during different growth stages, and the use of new technologies are crucial in conserving water and sustaining agriculture.
The writer is the Chief Scientist Agronomy (MRCFC)-SKUAST-Kashmir and can be reached at [email protected]

Dr Tasneem Mubarak