India has only 4% water but consumption is 13 % making it an alarming situation. .

Developed Nations water consumption: Industry

Developing Nations water consumption: Industry

Pumping water needs 3 phase electric supply.

Migration issue in villages
Making agriculture labour scarce and unreliable.
No feedback mechanism available to ensure crop water requirements.
Affordability of technology.

Cultivation of water guzzling crops (grown across India in most states)

Sugarcane
Banana
Rice
Vegetables

Drip irrigation for crops like rice (according to research) but cost economics come
into play.

Types of Irrigation:

Conventional/flood irrigation: Flood the entire field.

wastage of water: percolation, evaporation (30-40% irrigation efficiency)

Irrigation in Ridges and furrows (40-60)

Center pivot (65-85)

Sprinkler Irrigation: affected by wind speed (50-75)

(90-95) Drip Irrigation is the most efficient method of irrigation. Water saving
50-60%. This saving varies from crop to crop.
What is water saving?

Flood irrigation generally, water wastage is alot. 60-70% of the water is wasted.
which means its irrigation efficiency is 30-40% only.

But, drip irrigation its irrigation is done directly near the plant roots thus,
feeding the plant.
Since, root is the mouth of plant so whatever we might be applying should be
absorbed by the plant increasing its utilisation.
Thus, generally efficiency 90% means wastage is there but very miniscule.

For e.g. if Banana require 20 lts of water per day but since you are irrigating via
conventional irrigation thus there is water wastage and utilisation efficiency is
hampered.
But, in drip irrigation exact 20 lts is consumed by the plant.

difference between irrigation effiency between drip and conventional irrigation is

nothing but water saving.

Layout Drip Irrigation:

Water source
to
Pumping device
First unit immediately after water is extracted from the pump is
head control unit
contains various equipments
there are many filters: primary (many impurities sand or gravel or hydrocyclone)
and secondary filters
Sand filter: media is silica sand (typically to lift water from open water
sources): Organic impurities in such water sources like algae (no. 1 enemy of drip
irrigation and can block emitters)
Hydrocyclone filter: free flowing rivers as open source which filters out bigger
particles

secondary or backup filter:

Screen filter
Disc filter
They Arrest fine impurities and sediment particles

Fertigation equipments
Venturi Injectors: fertilizers, chemical and micronutrients are injected to the
plants
Increase in yeild means higher revnue
improve quality of farm produce.

scope of irrigation starts from pump's layout.

safety unit

Distribution network
Main lines or sub main lines
for distribution of water in the system (pvc pipes or hdp pipes (lesser use))
control valves
emitting lines

Actual drip system: emitting system

Advantages:
water saving (high efficiency)
fertiizer saving (optimum utilization): farmers usually broadcast fertilizers
immediately after irrigation
labour saving (irrigation and weed removal)
weed control
power saving
increase in yeild
improvement in quality of farm produce
soil erosion can be controlled
irrigation possible on undulated topography: difficult to grow crops in slopy land
but with use of special irrigators of drip irrigation.
use of saline water for irrigation is possible: by injecting acid in the system
entire system can be cleaned special way to do it.
with automation, night time irrigation is possible: program the sytem according to
irrigate at night.

Important things in irrigation: Rs of Drip irrigation

Drip right time: efficiently available to the plant

drip right place: root is the mouth thus, ensure apply water or nutrients at the
right place
drip right quantity: every plant has certain water requirements (can be calculated)
drip right company: a company with good hardware and software providing knowledge
efficient use of that company (Rivulis)

Do we really know when and how much to irrigate.

Manna Irrigation Intelligence: Cloud based irrigation system. Precisely irrigate
the crops according to need.
Satelitte technology

Soil structure - Movement of Water

Based on texture:
Clayey-Heavy (vertical movement low, lateral movement more - water holding capacity
high) || Wetting pattern: onion shaped || helps select configuration of drip line
-- high flow; wide spacing florets
Sandy loam - Medium || Wetting pattern: carrot shaped || helps select configuration
of drip line -- medium flow; medium spacing florets
Sandy - light (vertical movement high, lateral movement less - water holding
capacity low) || Wetting pattern: radish shaped || helps select configuration of
drip line -- low flow; close spacing florets

two types of emitters

online: fruitsv-- out in the dripline
inline: close spaced crops -- inside the drip line

Irrigation/ Application rate: as low as possible

design: cost effective
plant requirement
soil infiltration
available water and power (availability of water how much is there and hours of
power)

Emitter flow (1-4 lph)

emitter spacing (10, 20, 30cm...)

Water requirement: minimize deep percolation

crop water requirement = evotransportation (ETc)

It is combined loss of water through both evaporation as well as transpiration

ETc (mm/day) = ETo * Kc

ETo in mm/ day (changes with change in season taken from meteruggical station of
the area)
Kc is crop coefficient
(changes acc. to crop growth stage)

changes in season: water requirement of the plant is directly related to the loss
of the water from plant

with manna irrigation its easier to predict changes in season.

Drip Irrigation Layout:

Lateral Spacing (Mtr.) = Distance between 2 pipes laid along the crop row

emitter spacing (distance between 2 emitters)

Irrigation/ application rate (mm/hour) = Emitter discharge / (lateral spacing (m)

* emitter spacing (m))

gives the rate at which water is applied in that area

Irrigation time (hours/day) = crop water requirement (mm/day) / (irrigation /

application rate (mm/hour))
What is Rivulis?

Rivulis (Latin word): A small stream or river (natural flow of water)

With Rivulis name this company is 6 years old
But actually, the company started in 1966 i.e. ~ 50 years old

John Deere (makes tractor) acquired 3 irrigation companies.

Plastro irrigation from Israel : earlier joint venture between plastro and finolex
T systems international
Roberts irrigation
Both original from California

To run these business they established separate divison John Deere Water.
This Division was sold to private eqquity fund from Israel, Femi formed Rivulis.

Pune based Force waters bought some equity

manna irrigation acquired
eurodrip (european company: greece) acquired
JV with Russian company Polypastic
Temasek acquired Rivulis in 2020 (singapore govt. company)

Globally 2nd biggest irrigation supplier

India 6th

3rd centre: israel, greece and california

Indian Scenario:
Corporate office: Pune
Factory: Baroda Gujarat

centrally sponsored drip irrigation subsidy scheme of 50% by central govt

many state govt additionally provide other subsidies over central subsidy due to
water crisis in India from their on budget
e.g.: Tamil Nadu or AP based on land holding get 100% subsidy sometimes
Rivulis is approved Irrigation supplier for all these states.

(8-10 million hectare area brought under drip irrigation in 30 years out of 70
million hectares of cultivable area in India)
Pace of movement very low
The actual success ratio of drip irrigation is only 30% (i.e, not all farmers enjoy
all the benefits)
There could be many reasons to this: Even though there are proven benefits but lack
in implementation can affect the success

Essenitials for succesful implementation is needed so as to prevent failure of the

system.

-Proper selection of product/equipment (take consideration soil type, climate,

wtaer aavailbility, crop , planting pattern, electricity -- standard farm survey
questionnaire by Rivulis is present)
-Proper Designing (technical specifications must be followed for the system to work
efficiently)
Rivulis has special team of design engineers and softwares to design area specific
systems.
-Proper Installation (Take products to field and install in field as per design)
-Proper Operation & Maintenance (most important parameter -- customer is not a
farmer (owner of field) 90% wage labour working on the field maintaining, taking
care of the system. Easy to operate system but wage labor is illiterate fellow
needs to be trained in technology.
Improper operation has led to collapse of crores worth of Drip irrigation projects.
Drip irrigation highly service orientation field. Software part: how much and when
to irrigate and take care of pest or disease attack, take care of fertilizer and
chemical input requirements

In rainfed areas, and monsoon season there might not be massive requirements of
water to be irrigated in monsoon season but even then drip irrgation helps in
fermigation and thus, its recommended to operate these systems for 15-20 mins in
monsoon season.