Solar powered micro irrigation system suitable to the farm pond as water source for irrigating small areas under vegetables in drylands.
Small water harvesting ponds are crucial to sustain productivity by providing supplemental/lifesaving irrigation in the small holdings of Indian dryland agriculture. Applications of such water however, are always a major issue in these regions, since efficient and cost-effective pumping system is generally not available. In order to achieve the holistic utilization of water resources, a gravity-fed type micro irrigation system integrated with low cost solar based pumping system was designed. The system was designed considering the properties of flow characteristics derived from hydraulic study of different components of drip irrigation system. The system thus developed, has the capability to provide uniform emitter discharge over the small plot of 18m×6m. The star configuration of micro-tube layout where the lateral line feed four rows was successfully integrated in the developed irrigation system. The field experimentation and testing suggested that the system performance was found satisfactory as the flow rate variation, Christiansen uniformity coefficient and distribution uniformity were 18.96%, 93.65% and 91.55% respectively.