Abstract

Field investigations were carried out to estimate water budgeting for the allied components like cropping, poultry, pigeon, fish and mushroom linked in lowland integrated farming systems at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore during 1993-96. Water requirement for the allied components was estimated by adopting standard methodology. Results revealed that cultivation of rice-greengram-maize and rice-sunnhemp-maize cropping systems each in 0.50 hectare consumed 182 ha cm of water totally in a year. Whereas 201 ha cm of water was needed for rice-soybean-sunflower and rice-gingelly-maize cropping systems in 0.45 ha each involved in integrated farming systems. Poultry, pigeon, fish and mushroom components utilized 0.02, 0.04, 15.84 and 1.37 ha cm of water for their production in a year. Integration of cropping with pigeon + fish mushroom utilized 218 ha cm as against 182 ha em of water with conventional cropping system alone. Integration of poultry and pigeon required very little quantity of water and total water requirement in integration of improved cropping with fish mushroom + poultry/pigeon was lesser than the water requirement of cropping alone in one hectare land area. Integrating efficient allied components with cropping results in effective water budgeting with better economic returns in lowland farming.

Keywords: Lowland, Integrated Farming system, Cropping system, Poultry, Pigeon, Fish, Mushroom, Water Budgeting