OPTIMAL CONJUNCTIVE WATER USE IN NAGULERU SUB-BASIN OF THE KRISHNA iRIVER

Abstract

The agricultural production in most of the developing countries is inadequate. It is therefore necessary the food requirement of the rapidly growing population has to be inet form available resources; like increasing area under cultivation and increasing the productivity through optimal use of available land and water. Increasing area under cultivation is limited. Hence the optimal conjunctive use of both surface and ground water resources has become important. In the present study, the optimal conjunctive use of water is studied. in Naguleru sub-basin of the Krishna River basin. The Naguleru sub-basin is situated in Western part of the Guntur District of A.P State of India. This sub-basin comprises of 365.63 sq.km of the command area of NSPRC and 281.25 sq.km of the non-command area. The command area is experiencing the following problems: 1. Non-availability of irrigation water even for irrigating dry crops, in localized ayacut at tail end (known as gap ayacut problems) areas. 2. Irrigation of wet crops in the place of dry crops, in head and middle reaches, is resulting in excessive utilization of canal water over allocated water. 3. Irrigation of non-localized ayacut with wet crops in heads and middle reaches is also resulting in excessive utilization of canal water over allocated water. The non-command area is experiencing the problem of depletion of ground water table wherein entire irrigation system is depended on ground water. I he present study comprises of the following objectives: 1 Assessment of ground water resources and its stage of development, as per the Ground Water Resources Estimation Committee methodology, 1997 (GEC-1997). 2 Augmentation of ground water resources by means of artificial recharge methodologies by conserving surface runoff (catchment yield) available in the nom-command of the study area. 3 Optimal studies to maximize the annual artificial recharge by linear programming techniques.