On farm activities for enhancing productivity through rain water in ravines affected area of Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh Singh R. A.1, Rathi P. K., Singh Dhananjai, Haider Ekhlaq, Singh S. K. Farmers Participatory Action Research Programme on Water/Water Harvesting, C.S. Azad University of Agriculture & Technology, Kanpur-208002, India 1 Corresponding author e-mail: rasingh_csau@yahoo.co.in
Online published on 11 January, 2012. Abstract On farm activities to manage the rain water were followed for water resources development on watershed basis in Bundelkhand. The main objective of the study was to enhance the crop productivity on ravinous land with different on farm activities based on rain water management. Twenty five check dams were constructed earlier in the entire project area on down stream of nalas. The catchment area of these nalas bunds is about 200 ha and 20 hectometer surface water is arrested in these check dams every year, which was exploited for irrigation on 190 ha land. The mini earthen store reservoir in the form of contour bunds, submergence bunds, water harvesting bundhies, land levelling & smoothening and vegetative barrier, which were earlier formed also help in harvesting the maximum rain water under dry environment. The arrested rain water and run off control have helped in improvement of ground water table, which has risen to the extent of 3.85 m over the base year. The cropping systems followed in catchments area of check dams gave system productivity as 47.94 q/ha in sesamum-pea, 42.00 q/ha in sesamum-gram, 37.52 q/ha in sesamum-mustard and 72.48 q/ha in black gram-wheat, which was higher over the farmers practices. The cultivation on contour alignment gave system productivity of sesamum - pea by 37.41 q/ha, sesamum -gram by 34.86 q/ha, sesamum -mustard by 32.89 q/ha and black gram- wheat by 54.28 q/ha. The long duration pigeon pea raised in submergence bunding gave yield of 22.00 q/ha, which was higher over farmers practices (19.50 q/ha). The cabbage and tomato yielded 255.00 q/ha and 242.00 q/ha, respectively, irrigated with recycled water in well from the water harvesting demonstration, conducted under ‘Farmers Participatory Action Research programme on Water/Rain Water Harvesting’. The grain yield of pigeon pea harvested was 21.00 q/ha from the leveled field, which was higher by a margin of 1.50 q/ha or 7.70% over farmers practices. The black gram and wheat yielded 8.50 q/ha and 47.85 q/ha, respectively, from the cropping system of black gram - wheat followed under this soil and water conservation measures. Top Key words: Arrested water, Bundelkhand, On farm activities, Participatory research, Ravines, Shallow tube well. Top |