| dc.description.abstract |
Water availability and soil moisture retention have been major factors determining crop
production of the dry zone areas, especially in the most soils of Batticaloa, situated in the eastern
region of Sri Lanka. Any effort geared to conservation and proper water management practices
would lead to increase in both water use efficiency and overall productivity of agriculture.
Decision-making is an important process in water management. In view of this fact, a more
practical and effective system referred to as BATTI-DROP, computer based Decision Support
System, was developed for on-farm water management with special reference and application to
the Batticaloa district. The package was developed as an application of Access with Visual Basic
interface. The programme contains general information on various irrigation topics as well as
diagnostic analysis, which then leads to an analysis of possible solutions. An extensive diagnostic
tree has been developed, based on the experience of irrigation experts. BATTI-DROP provides
the user with the facility to access diagnostic tree as well as to study information that is stored in
the database.
The user can refer basic information relevant to irrigation such as soil properties, rainfall and
Crop reference Evapo-transpiration (ETo). BATTI-DROP also recommends the selection of
irrigation methods and soil moisture conservation measures in relation to a particular soil type of
the district. Besides, recommendations for the construction of agro-wells are also included in this
programme. The facilities provided to calculate Crop Water Requirements (CWR) and irrigated
water management practices by linking with CROPWAT Programme would enable the users to
experiment the concept of more money per drop.
It is assured that BATTI-DROP would be a readily available and good single source of
information to guide irrigation professionals. |
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