Water Technology Center, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi-110 012.
Water logged and salt affected soils are both natural occurring and also consequence of improper water management in the irrigated commands. While there are reservations about the correctness of the different estimates of areas having the above problems, it is a fact that both adversely affected the crop production. Agricultural drainage is powerful technology to reclaim the water logged and saline lines and restore through productivity. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research in the early 80s established the All India Coordinated Research Project on Agricultural Drainage to initiate systematic research on the subject in 5 representative drainage problem areas in 5 states. This report is a brief presentation of the mandate and objectives of the project and the salient findings of the drainage research conducted in the farmers field during the last one and a half decade. The findings suggest that land drainage is the most appropriate technology for improving the crop productivity in degraded agricultural lands. Where conventional drainage is not feasible due to certain constraints there are alternative technologies which achieve the same goal of increasing the crop productivity.
