Abstract:
Scarcity of Water resource is getting more and more serious to the irrigated Agriculture and
ecological system in Sri Lanka. Improvement of irrigation water management is an important
measure to save water and increase water use efficiency (WUE). Decision making on irrigation is
one of the most complicated activities undertaken by irrigation planners, managers, marketing
agents, manufacturers, academics and farmers. Therefore, a Decision Support System (DSS) has
been developed to improve the On-Farm Water Management. This study was conducted to
develop a user-friendly DSS, using appropriate computer technologies to make available the
irrigation-related informationto Sri Lanka. This package allows retrieval facilityfor informationon
major soil types and their properties, rainfall and reference crop evapotranspiration for different
locations of SriLanka. Further, for thecalculation of cropwater requirementsandirrigationscheduling
a facility was made to link the CROPWAT programme. Also, this software package provides
recommendation on irrigationmethodsuitable for a particularlocationand crop based on infiltration
rate, hydraulic conductivity, available water capacity and irrigation water quality. In addition to
that, details on irrigation expertise and training tools are provided for academic and research
interests. It is hoped that this research has adequately demonstrated the potential value of
irrigation information. And some other necessary resources will be found for further development
of this work to benefit the wider irrigation community.
