Performance of rainwater harvesting with storage for supplementary irrigation on paddy production in semi-arid Hombolo Tanzania
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Date
1997
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Sokoine University of Agriculture
Abstract
Rainfed lowland rice production covers 75 % of the total area (369000ha)currently under
Tanzania ・Itisthe most predominant compared to others like Irrigated Hydro-morph i c
employs and simple Inland flood rice swamp in ecosystem rice (3 %) , Upland (22 %),
ecosystems. Management water production The system techniques of Rainwater Harvesting (RWH). RWH system has a catchment or collecting area and a cropped basin where the collected
runoff is used to grow crops.
In the semi-arid areas of Tanzania (parts of Tabora,Shinyanga, Mwanza, Singida and Dodoma regions) farmers have developed a system of RWH, involving water diversion
sheet flow and ephemeral lowland rice production. streams to valley basins from for Rice in this system is grown in flooded bunded basins called * Majaruba* .establishment is transplanting,
The usual stand although direct seeding onto puddled or dry fields are also practised.
The main problem with the current RWH system is that it is subjected to high uncertain!ties of rainfall amount and distribution.The rainfall in these rice growing areas Is very unreliable during the characterised growing season cultivation very risky with frequent dryspells This phenomenon makes rice Often water stored in cultivated basins z Majaruba7 is inadequate to sustain the crop through 20 to 40 day dryspells.As a result, low yields or total crop failure due to f drought * is quite common.
This study focused on evaluation of performance of surface storage for supplementary irrigation of the paddy crop to reduce the effect objectives were:system,of long dry spells.The specific
(i) test the performance of water storage
(ii) assess the effect of supplementary irrigation on soil moisturez stress effect at different growth stages of paddy rice and the overall paddy yield.Results show that there was a significant difference in yield, between with and without supplementary irrigation treatments.RWH with storage and supplemental irrigation produced 3.2 tons/ha while RWH without storage produced 0.2 tons/ha and the one without RWH yielded 0.1 tons/ha.These results show that RWH incorporating storage reservoirfor supplementary irrigation stabilize yields of paddy in of paddy could help to semi-arid areas of Tanzania.Further research of RWH plus storage for supplementary irrigation on paddy production along with its economic analyisis is recommended.
Description
Dissertation
Keywords
Water management, Farming systems, Soil profile, Lowland rice production