Techniques for enhancing water use efficiency in vegetables

Vegetable crops provide higher productivity and economic returns per unit of applied water compared with field crops. Irrigation is crucial to achieve high economic returns, in terms of both yield and product quality and the use of modern systems of irrigation, which irrigates the plant rather than field ultimately results in productive use of water and enhanced water use efficiency. Improving water productivity is equivalent to obtaining more value from each drop of water. In India, most of the water meant for agriculture is used for growing staple food crops and only about 10% of the agricultural water is utilized for horticultural crops which necessitates the more areas of vegetables under micro irrigation system. The increase in water productivity of vegetable crops has the potential of reducing water requirement in terms of providing unit energy, unit protein and other nutrients as well as economic returns.