Tuesday, October 23, 2012

USING BRACKISH WATER IN HORTICULTURAL CROPS, PAU GETS MEGA INDO-ISRAEL PROJECT

LUDHIANA, OCTOBER 23:--



The 43% of the well waters in Punjab are brackish and 71% of these are in South-western districts. This was stated by the PAU Director of Research, Dr. S.S. Gosal adding that indiscriminate use of these waters adversely affect physical and chemical properties of soil and the plant growth. The other problem in the area is of water-logging in certain areas and that overuse of canal water is compounding the problem of rising water table in the region. The region has about 54% area of the state under fruits and 10% under vegetables.



To develop technologies of using brackish water for irrigating horticultural crops and for minimizing buildup of salts in soil, a project under Indo-Israel Action Plan of the National Horticultural Mission (NHM), with a budget estimate of Rs.14.96 crore was put forth. Dr. Gosal said that the other objective of the project is to develop best management practices using micro-irrigation and fertigation techniques, and to introduce and evaluate saline/sodic water tolerant fruit and vegetable germplasm and to understand physiology of salt tolerance. The project has been approved after a series of discussions with Israeli water experts and NHM authorities. The project will be implemented at PAU Regional Station Bathinda where a desalination plant with solar photo voltaic power system will also be setup for producing good quality water for 10 acres as a pilot project for raising fruits and vegetable crops. The state level executive committee has decided to release a sum of Rs.8.00 crore for the current year (2012-13), and an amount of Rs.3.00 crore has already been released, he said.





The Additional Director of Research (Natural Resources & Plant Health Management), Dr. Jagtar Singh Dhiman said that the project will help promote horticultural crops in the region that is largely underlain by brackish ground water adding that it will lead to technologies aimed at enhancing water use efficiency, understanding threshold limits of salinity in horticultural crops. The Principal Investigator of the project, Dr. O.P Choudhary said that the project site has been visited to plan the work as per technical programme of the project.












News From: http://www.7StarNews.com

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