OPTIMAL IMPROVEMENT FOR WATER COURSES

Abstract

Water being the rr_ost limitng agricultural inputs conservation of water is acquiring a new dimension as the demand for water is increasing. More and more attention is being paid towards efficient farm water management as the primary poten-tial for increasing agricultural prcduction i$. t.o- utilise avail-able water resource more efficiently, One of the facet of efficient use of water is to reduce losses from conveyance system. Various investigators have tackled the problem of improve-ment to water course system with different approaches. From the brief review presented here ins it is observed that the problem of water conservation has not been dealtwith in its true pers-pective. As the cost of the water course system is born by the farmers, the potential benefits from the saved water should accrue to them only otherwise they will not be interested in the improvement. .y considering this factors an attempt has been made in this study to find a computer based solution by best possible combination of improvement techniques under the known constrained donditions by analysing a Non-Linear Programm- ing moddl recently developed and tested. This mathematical model was tested for its successful run and has been used to find out optimum length of various water course improvement alternatives for real world problem on two outlets of Salawa Command Area. The results of the study together with the sensitivity analysis are presented in the dissertation...