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In this paper standardized precipitation index (SPI) is used to assess meteorological drought for all 30 districts covering 10 agro-climatic zones in an eastern Indian state, Odisha. Monthly rainfall data of 115 years (1901-2015) for all 30 districts of Odisha are analyzed using SPI on 1, 3, 6, 9 and 12-month timescale. These timescales reflect the impact of drought on the availability of different water resources. Results indicate that in all the agro-climatic zones of Odisha, mild drought events have the highest frequencies of occurrence followed by moderate drought events for different timescales. Severe and extreme drought frequencies are comparatively lesser than mild and moderate drought frequencies. SPI analysis shows that 32-46 years are affected by mild drought, 4-16 years affected by moderate drought, 1-9 years are affected by severe drought and 1-5 years are affected by extreme drought during study period of 115 years in different agro-climatic zones of Odisha. It is observed 50.3% areas in the state are affected by drought in June out of which chances of occurrence of mild drought is maximum (28.7%). In the months of July, August and September, 51.7, 48.5 and 46.1% areas are affected by droughts. On average 49.15% areas of the entire state is affected by drought of various intensities out of which the share of mild, moderate, severe and extreme drought is 28.38, 13.28, 5.06 and 2.43%, respectively.

Background: Study has been undertaken in SAT (Semi-arid tropics) region located between 23o 8'- 26o 30' latitude and 78o11'- 81o30' longitude with an altitude varying from 230 to 280 m above mean sea level (MSL), Central India for assessing the impact after interventions of natural resource management (NRM) under watershed development programme. Agricultural productivity of Semi-arid tropics oscillates between 0.5 and 2.0 ton ha-1 with an average of one ton per ha (Rockstrom et al., 2010; Wani et al., 2011a, 2011b). The main objectives of this study are to establish agroforestry based crop cultivation which provides nutritional food as well as transform the mankind’s living status and also supports the doubling farmer’s income goal without associated ecological harm. Methods: To evaluate the economic feasibility and crop productivity along with agroforestry was worked out on the basis of survey and sampling. To get uniform samples of crops from cultivated fields some specific area selected (1 m x 1 m size) and get about 80 crop samples for measurements from whole watershed. All data has been collected through survey of 40% households of watershed and then all these data subjected to statistical analysis in the laboratory. To minimize the problem and rejuvenate the water body, water resource development plan helps in identify the available sources so that appropriate and effective with durable solutions can be formulated. The net return of crop cultivated was calculated by subtracting the cost of cultivation incurred from sowing to harvesting, for each crop from the gross return and then benefit-cost ratio was estimated for further improvement or scaled up and livelihood security of former. Result: The study has revealed that after watershed interventions and agroforestry based Crop cultivation, water level increased 2-6 m, crop production increased by 45-47%, cropping intensity increased 97-98% from 44-46% and migration decreased by 70-72%. During both season, the expenses on irrigation and labour will decrease, crop productivity will improve and benefit-cost ratio increased. Nutrition based food production provided the base for food security as it is a key determination of food availability.

The north-eastern region of India, although rich in land and water resources, often suffers from a water-scarce situation particularly during the non-rainy season. The steep terrain conditions do not support conventional irrigation systems and therefore micro-irrigation system needs to be promoted. In micro-irrigation systems, maintaining uniformity of application is necessary to achieve a satisfactory crop yield. Maintaining the system hydraulics is a challenge due to the terrain conditions and equipment available. A study was conducted to observe various uniformity parameters of selected emitters at five different operating pressures, viz. 0.5, 0.75, 1.0, 1.25 and 1.5 kg cm–2. In the study it was observed that the discharge variation of the selected emitters was between 8.7 and 39.7%. The uniformity coefficient varied from 0.9 to 16.6, where the distribution uniformity and statistical uniformity varied from 81.1 to 99.1% and 83.4–99.1% respectively. The emitter flow variation ranged from 0.03 to 0.49 in the range of 0.51.5 kg cm–2. The emitter exponent indicated that the values ranged from 0.20 to 0.55. All these values were far from the manufacturer's value. From the study we can interpret that the emitting system needs to be tested before adoption in the field to ensure uniformity of water application. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.