Reclamation and Management of Waterlogged Saline Soils [antikvár]

PREFACE India has adopted the path of development of water resources through water conservation, storage, diversion and transportation by canal networl< to deficit areas to provide security and diversity to food production, to supply water to human and animal use and for industry and for many other requirements of the ever increasing population. However, such transportation and use for irrigation in arid and semlarid areas has resulted in degradation of land and water resources through waterlogging and soil salinity. The current estimates are that about 3.0 m ha hitherto productive agricultural area is affected with such problems. At national level, considerable efforts are being made to monitor the extent of the problems and plan remedial measures. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is playing an important role in planning, promoting and coordinating research efforts on this ever increasing menace. The availability of research information for management of such soils is greatly fulfilled by an Indo-Netherlands collaborative project under operation at Central Soil Salinity Research Institute (CSSRI), Karnal and CCS Haryana Agricultural University (HAU), 'Hi'sar. The Netherlands government appointed the Land and Water Research Group (LAWOO) as the umbrella organization for the implementation of Dutch contributions and within the group, the International Institute for Land Reclamation and Improvement (ILRI, Wageningen) implemented the projects. The technical advise to CSSRI remained with ILRI, whereas the technical advise to CCS HAU was subcontracted to the Winand Staring Centre (WSC, Wageningen). Ir. RJ Oosterbaan and Ir. CWJ Roest are the Chief Technical Advisors for the CSSRI and CCS HAU projects respectively. Through the Indo-Dutch project, which was in operation for the last 10 years, strategies for combating waterlogging and soil salinity problems in Haryana have been developed. As a result of these successful researches, several small scale projects have been manually installed in farmers' fields in the state of Haryana. The experimentation in these small scale projects were successful in controlling waterlogging and soil salinity and also created awareness among the farming community. A national seminar on Reclamation and Management of Waterlogged Saline Soils has been organised in April 1994 jointly by CSSRI, Karnal and CCS HAU, Hisar with the participation of ILRI and WSC, Wageningen, The Netherlands and a galaxy of experts in the field to review and synthesise these research efforts. This publication contains the papers presented and the recommendations emerged from the seminar. The (i)