Impact of underground irrigation water on soil properties and sodic soil reclamation technologies on pearlmillet-wheat crop sequence

Abstract

An on-farm study was undertaken to determine the quality of underground water, its effect on soil properties in the canal command areas, and impact of sodic soil technologies gypsum levels, green manuring, farm yard manure (FYM) and deep tillage on yield of pearlmillet wheat crop sequence. Eighty six water samples collected from canal command area of Tonk district of Rajasthan revealed that 22.1, 10.9, 5.8, 21.5, 29.8 and 9.9% water samples were under good, marginally saline, saline, marginally alkali, alkali and highly alkali categories, respectively. Most of these waters had dominance of sodium followed by calcium in cations and chloride as major anion followed by bicarbonate and carbonates. After interventions of sodic soil reclamation, wheat crop in and pearlmillet in next i.e. -rabi kharif season was grown. Maximum mean yields of 2.53 t-1 ha grain and 11.0 t ha straw of pearlmillet and 3.95 t ha grain and 4.74 t ha straw of wheat were obtained with deep tillage in summer along with gypsum application @50% GR, green manuring and FYM @ 10 t ha-1 followed by GR-50% along with green manuring and FYM @ 10 t ha-1 . Treatment of deep tillage in summer along with GR-50%, green manuring and FYM@10 t ha resulted in significant reduction of EC, pH, ESP and bulk density, improvement in infiltration rate and availability of N, P, K and micronutrients.