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Water is one of the most important elements in this world. No life will exist without water. The main consumer of water is agriculture but due to mismanagement, overpopulation, and climatic changes this valuable natural resource is getting scarce position throughout the world. It has become very important to define appropriate strategies for planning, development, and management of water resources. The main objective of this paper is to the estimation of crop water requirement of Kharif maize crop for effective irrigation management. For proper irrigation management, CROPWAT is the best model suggested by FAO. 16-year climatic data were analyzed with the CROPWAT model, which is based on the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) paper number 56 (FAO 56). The Penman-Monteith method was used to estimate reference evapotranspiration (ET0). The model predicted the daily, decadal as well as monthly crop water requirement at different growing stages of maize crop. The average reference crop evapotranspiration (ETc­) during the 16 years was found to be 313.21 mm. It varies from 222.8 mm to 515.9 mm. The average irrigation requirement for maize crops during the period from 25th June to 17th September was 42.01 mm.

In floriculture, marigold is one of India's most important commercially grown flower crops, which ranked third in number after Roses and Chrysanthemum. The present experiment was carried out during the winter season of the year 2019-2020 & 2020-2021 in the laboratory field of the Dept. of SWE, SVCAET &RS, IGKV, Raipur (C.G.) India. To study the economical analysis of Marigold crop cultivation with major constraints, three kinds of growing media was used like Cocopeat, soil and Farm Yard Manure (FYM) in three different growing containers viz: Reusable flour bags, conventional grow bags and plastic bottles with all the same growing conditions. In marigold crop production shows that the Reuseable Flour Bag (RFB) produced 13.65 MT flower, followed by plastic bottle (PB) 13.18 MT and Conventional Grow Bag (CGB) 13.03 MT in the same way the net benefit was calculated as highest as 296997.89 /ha in RFB, 249095.86 /ha in plastic bottle and 131078.79 /ha in RFB. The benefit-cost ratio was found to be highest in plastic bottles as 2.093, followed by 1.847 in RFB and 1.277 in CGB.

Polythene mulches have been practiced for soil solarisation during winter months in various vegetable crops and have been found superior over other types of mulches, but plastics is create environmental problems. With this in view the present study has be undertaken on clay loam soil at Raipur, Chhattisgarh for Rabi onion. The aim of the experiment was to study the hydraulic performance of existing drip irrigation system under different operating pressure and prepare used plastic based mulching sheet to evaluate their performance in terms of change in micro-climate. In this study eight different types of mulching conditions were considered viz. black plastic mulch (BPM), silver plastic mulch (SPM), used reddish rice bag mulch (RBM), used whitish wheat flour bag mulch (WFBM), used yellowish cement bag mulch (CBM), Paddy straw mulch (PSM), soil mulch (SM) and without mulch (WM) (control) and comparison was done among them in micro-climatic condition. The main micro-climatic parameters like soil temperature, soil moisture content, soil moisture depletion were studied with randomized block designed in three replications. In Hydraulic performances of drip irrigation system were studied for 2.4 l h-1 inline emitters at 1, 1.2 and 1.5 kg cm-2 pressures, discharges from drippers were found to be 1.99 l h-1, 2.22 l h-1 and 2.33 l h-1, coefficient of variation 0.061, 0.044 and 0.029 were found and emission uniformity 95.59%, 96.54% and 96.69% were found, respectively. Also, from this study, it was found that during forenoon soil temperature increases with increasing soil depth but in afternoon the trend was vice-versa. The maximum soil moisture content (27.89%) was found under BPM and minimum soil moisture content (21.52%) was found under used WM. Similarly soil moisture depletion was found minimum in BPM (0.31 mm) and maximum under WM (3.08 mm) under all eight types of mulches. The study concludes that the hydraulic performance of drip irrigation system was found good and needs to be operated at 1.2-1.5 kg cm-2 pressure for 2.4 lh-1 inline emitter. At a particular spacing, the emission uniformity, uniformity coefficient and irrigation efficiencies increases when operating pressure is increased but coefficient of variation and emitter flow variation decreases when operating pressure is increased. Mulching roll can be prepared from used plastic bags which are available with the farmers in plenty and can be reused as mulching material satisfactorily by small and marginal farmers.

The return of ladies finger (okra) to the joint effect of drip irrigation and mulches is very encouraging. The most common types of mulch are the black plastic mulch (BPM), which is commercially produced by industry but does create environmental problems and increased cost of production particularly for small and marginal farmers. On the other hand, food materials and fertilizers etc. are available and sold in plastic bags. Can we make REUSE of these plastic bags in preparing low cost mulching system for small and marginal farmers? With this in view a field experiment was carried out during the year 2017 at Department of Soil and Water Engineering, Swami Vivekanand College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology & Research Station, Indira Gandhi Krishi Vishwavidyalaya, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India. The research experiment was performed in a split plot design on clay loam soil during summer season (February to May) for growing okra. Levels of irrigation were assigned based on crop evapotranspiration (ETc). The effect of four irrigation levels viz. 60% ETc, 80% ETc, 100% ETc and 120% ETc with drip under black plastic mulch (BPM) and different types used plastic material as mulch viz. used reddish rice bag mulch (RBM), used whitish wheat flour bag mulch (WFBM), used white fertilizer bag mulch (FBM) were studied for moderating the temperature, moisture conservation, weed restriction, yield, water use efficiency and cost economics also. Temperature measurement was done with Digital Soil Thermometer at a depth of 7.6 cm and 12 cm at 7:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. It reflects that used plastic mulches are moderating the temperature at par as BPM. Soil moisture measurement was done with Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) at 7.6 and 12 cm. Average moisture content under BPM, WFBM, RBM and FBM at 7.6 cm was found to be 27.5%, 25.5%, 26.5% and 26.4% respectively, while it was found to be 23.8%, 21.8%, 22.7% and 22.4% respectively at 12 cm depth. Maximum weed population control (96%) was recorded with BPM followed by used RBM (82%), used FBM (80%) and used WFBM (76%) respectively. The benefit cost ratio was also worked out and found to be higher (2.09) under 120% ETc with BPM as compared to 120% ETc with used RBM (1.86), 120% ETc with used WFBM (1.82) and 80% ETc with used WFBM (1.81). Highest Crop Water Use Efficiency (42.38 kg ha−1 mm−1) was found at 60% ETc with BPM as compared to 80% ETc with BPM (36.72 kg ha−1 mm−1), 80% ETc with used BPM (34.17 kg ha−1 mm−1) and 80% ETc with used WFBM (31.58 kg ha−1 mm−1). From the point of view of initial investment and water saving the 80% ETc with used WFBM is a better choice for small and marginal farmer as the return (1.81) is also closer to the other treatments.

Freshwater quality and quantity are some of the fundamental requirements for sustaining human life and civilization. The Water Quality Index is the most extensively used parameter for determining water quality worldwide. However, the traditional approach for the calculation of the WQI is often complex and time consuming since it requires handling large data sets and involves the calculation of several subindices. We investigated the performance of artificial intelligence techniques, including particle swarm optimization (PSO), a naive Bayes classifier (NBC), and a support vector machine (SVM), for predicting the water quality index. We used an SVM and NBC for prediction, in conjunction with PSO for optimization. To validate the obtained results, groundwater water quality parameters and their corresponding water quality indices were found for water collected from the Pindrawan tank area in Chhattisgarh, India. Our results show that PSO–NBC provided a 92.8% prediction accuracy of the WQI indices, whereas the PSO–SVM accuracy was 77.60%. The study’s outcomes further suggest that ensemble machine learning (ML) algorithms can be used to estimate and predict the Water Quality Index with significant accuracy. Thus, the proposed framework can be directly used for the prediction of the WQI using the measured field parameters while saving significant time and effort.

Kinetic energy of water powered pumping system is a cheap, efficient and precise way of delivering water to farm pond/open well from nearby canal or nallah. The pumping system is simple to develop, install, operate and very much cater to the need of rural remote area. It may be suitable for un-electrified as well as unreliable electric supply area. A cup type water wheel pumping system (CTWWPS) has been developed with major components as cart wheel, axel, cups, bearing, hub pulley, belt and a centrifugal pump. The cups were mounted on the periphery of wheel and fixed over the frame. The power from the wheel is transferred to the pulley of pump. Flowing water pushes the cup, hence, the wheel rotates and so the pulley of the pump. CTWWPS gave a discharge 0.178 to 0.378 lps at suction head of 0.56 m to 0.25 m and delivery head of 1.30 m to 0.70 m under 0.23 m to 0.59 m of head over the flume.

Gravity drip system of irrigation is a cheap, efficient and precised way of providing irrigation water for the kitchen garden. The system is simple to develop, install, operate and very much cater to the need of urban as well as rural kitchen gardening and needs of small and marginal farmers under Badi system of cultivation. It is especially suitable for un-electrified as well as unreliable electric supply area. However, its hydraulic performance needs to be assessed before being used in the kitchen garden for smooth and precise application of water and nutrient. In this study a gravity drip system of irrigation was developed and its hydraulic performance has been evaluated. The system was developed with a platform supported by a frame of 2.55 m height, an overhead tank of 750 liter, 20 m sub main of 63 mm diameter, 200 m lateral of 16 mm with 1.3 lph rated discharge, control valve, flush valve, 10 nos. lateral filters, 10 nos. lateral valves, end caps etc. for a plot of 100 sq. m. (20m × 5m). Hydraulic performance of the system was then evaluated on levelled field at Department of Soil and Water Engineering, IGKV, Raipur, in terms of effect of pressure (head) on discharge, manufacturing coefficient of variation, mean flow rate deviation, uniformity coefficient, application efficiency and distribution efficiency at the falling head of 3.55 m to 2.60 m from the emitting surface. Coefficient of variation, emitter flow variation, uniformity coefficient, application efficiency and distribution efficiency was found to be 4.77%, 14.54%, 95.23%, 91.21% and 95.97% which are in the acceptable limits.

This study presents estimation of daily reference evapotranspiration using artificial neural network (ANN) for Raipur region of Chhattisgarh. An ANN is a flexible mathematical structure, which is capable of identifying complex nonlinear relationships between input and output data sets. To test artificial neural networks (ANN) for estimating reference evapotranspiration with limited climatic data, comparison has been made with Penman Montieth (PM) method. Data on daily maximum temperature (Tmax), minimum temperature (Tmin), relative humidity (RH), wind speed (WS) and sunshine hours (SSH) of 31 years were collected from the observatory of Department of Agrometeorology, IGKV, Raipur. Four different models have been developed based on input combination viz: M1 (Tmax, Tmin, RH (I), RH (II), WS and SSH), M2 (Tmax, RH (I), RH (II), WS and SSH), M3 (Tmax, WS and SSH) and M4 (Tmax and SSH). The analysis was carried out in MATLAB R2014b software. Performance evaluation of the models have been carried out by calculating mean absolute deviation (MAD), root mean square error (RMSE), absolute Prediction Error (APE), coefficient of correlation (CC), coefficient of efficiency (CE) and Index of Agreement (IOA). Upon comparison the Model M1R showed the highest CC, CE and IOA value as 99.7, 99.4 and 99.8 during training and highest CC, CE and IOA value as 99.7, 99.5 and 99.6 during testing period. The developed ANN models may therefore be adopted for estimating ET0 in the region with reasonable degree of accuracy.