Abstract
Tank irrigation systems of South India account for about one third of the total rice irrigated area. In the recent past, poor maintenance of the tanks both by government and farmers contributed for the declining tank performance, as indicated by the declining rice area irrigated as well as by reduction in rice yield due to growing water scarcity at the end of the crop period. Since in five out of ten years the tanks received only about only half of their full storage, farmers often incur losses in rice production due to water scarcity. Both the government and farmers are feeling that the cropping pattern in the tank irrigation systems should be changed so that it is possible to stabilize the farmers income by minimizing the risk of crop failure under rice cultivation.
The tank simulation model developed earlier was updated using the coefficients from a system of simultaneous equations. The stress days and yield reduction equations were improved in the tank simulation model. Possible cropping patterns that may suit the tank systems in different years as well as data on net income, input requirement and crop rotation for normal, surplus, deficit and failure tank irrigation periods were used to workout the expected income under different crop mix in the optimization model. The minimization of the total absolute deviation (MOT AD) was used to derive the optimum cropping pattern. The results indicate that optimal cropping pattern for the tank systems consists of 25% rice and 75% non-rice crop.
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© 1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Palanisami, K. (1993). Optimization of cropping patterns in tank irrigation systems in Tamil Nadu, India. In: Penning de Vries, F., Teng, P., Metselaar, K. (eds) Systems approaches for agricultural development. Systems Approaches for Sustainable Agricultural Development, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2840-7_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2840-7_25
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-0-7923-1880-4
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