Abstract:
Subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) is an advanced and recent revolutionary
variation of traditional drip irrigation where the tubing and emitters are buried
beneath the soil surface. The field experiment was done at the institutional farm,
KCAET, Tavanur. The experiment was aimed to optimize the depth of installation
of laterals and spacing between laterals under subsurface drip system. This study
also computed the deep percolation from different layers with different lateral
depths. The soil moisture was taken from different depths and horizontal distance
and soil moisture contour maps were plotted. The results showed that the moisture
content increased with depth from the surface due to the less evaporation loss.
Also, the amount of moisture was found to be decreased with time. Moisture
content at the surface layer for 10 cm lateral was 14.5 per cent whereas the same
for 20 cm lateral was 11.6 per cent.
The maximum values of yield were observed for the treatment T 4 , and
then T1 (which have 15 cm and 10 cm lateral depth respectively). The highest
water use efficiency was for treatment T 4 with a value of 37.96 kg/ha-mm
followed by treatment T 1 with 34.6 kg/ha-mm. In the statistical analysis, it was
observed that, there were significant variations between treatments. The number
of leaves was influenced by both spacing between laterals and depth of laterals.
Stem girth was varied significantly by spacing between laterals. Both spacing
between laterals and lateral depth had remarkable effect on crop height. Deep
percolation was relatively less from the surface layers than from the deeper layers
in higher lateral depths (i.e., 20 cm lateral depth).
