Sorghum

Water Management

Introduction

Sorghum is well adapted to subhumid to semiarid condition, but it is extensively grown under irrigation because it makes good use of additional water.
Irrigated crop obviously yields higher at 3000-4000 kg/ha in comparition to 1500 to 2000 kg/ha under rainfed conditions.

Water Requirement

Regulate the irrigation according to soil type and growth phase.

Stage	No. of Irrigation	Days after sowing
Light soils
Irrigate for germination	1	0
For establishment	1	4
Vegetative phase	2	15 and 30
Flowering phase (give copious irrigation)	3	40,52 and 64
Maturity phase	2	76 and 88
Stop irrigation thereafter
Heavy soils
Irrigate for germination	1	0
For establishment	1	4
Vegetative phase	2	17 and 30
Flowering phase (give copious irrigation)	3	45,60 and 75
Maturity phase	1	90

Adjust irrigation schedule according to the weather conditions and depending upon receipt of rains.
Spray Kaolin 3% (30 gm in one litre of water) during water stress period.

Surge Irrigation

Surge irrigation is the delivery of water intermittently by on-off fashion relatively over a short span of time.
It facilitates uniform distribution of moisture in the entire length of furrow.
Surface sealing of furrow bed is accomplished by soil particle displacement, migration, re-orientation and deposition.
Surge irrigation method involves placing short inlet pipes of 50 cm length with a diameter of 6 cm in each furrow and connected to main channel.
Water enters into the furrows through inlet pipe at a flow rate of 1 to 1.5 lps (litres per second) water flows without any turbulence.
Based on the quantum of flow and permissible quantum one set of furrows are opened and another set of furrows are closed for specified time.
The operation is repeated till the water front advance reaches near the tail end.

Critical Stages For Water Requirement

Flowering phase requires copious irrigation. Improper irrigation at this stage reduces the yield drastically.

Improved Recommendation

Furrow irrigation once in 15-16 days during first 20 days of sowing and six irrigations with an interval of 6 days during the rest of the crop period.
Raton sorghum six irrigation viz., at rationing, 4-5 leaf stage, milking, soft dough and hard dough.
Surge irrigation is feasible in long furrow (>100 m) in level lands

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Tamilnadu

Sorghum

About Sorghum

History
Morphology

Sorghum Management

Services Overview

The key services offered by Ikisan are:

System study, design and development of IT enabled solutions and services for the agri sector.

Execution of rural IT enabled projects on BOT/BOOT/Turnkey basis.

Development, Customization and Deployment of Ikisan's IPR protected software applications.

Providing support services and best management practices for augmenting the marketing development efforts of the groups agricultural input companies (NFCL and NACL).

Development and Dissemination of best practice and information though a unique multi lingual knowledge website for the agri sector.

Some of the key customers/partners that benefit significantly from our work include are Electronics Corporation of India Ltd, State Agricultural Marketing Boards, Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Tamilnadu, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Motorola Mobility (GOOGLE) etc.

As highlighted earlier Ikisan provides significant support to the market development and marketing efforts of NFCL and NACL by providing best practices and information across the agricultural input value chain - weather, soil, seeds, fertilizers, water, pesticides, output prices etc. that have enabled the companies to develop deep customer relationships and in turn enable them to grow above market growth rates. Recently example in fertilizers includes the development of Customized Fertilizer Grades (for NFCL across India that are crop and location specific have not only reduced the current consumption of fertilizers of farmers but have significantly enhanced crop yields and farmer incomes) that are expected to add significant revenues to the company.

Currently, agriculture value chain is driven by technical expertise. However, there is a lack of adequate Management knowledge and skills amongst the professionals. Therefore, Ikisan and XLRI, Jamshedpur have jointly developed an Agri Business Management Program for Agri-professionals and students. Ikisan provides the domain expertise while XLRI provides pedagogy. This program is a combination of virtual learning and campus based module at XLRI, Jamshedpur. This program has been highly appreciated.

Intellectual Property Rights for many software applications such as Field Manager, Vyapar, Mandi, Quick Solutions Systems, Management Time Table, Agri Information System and Agrecommerz belong to Ikisan. A significant recent development in this area is the introduction of Weather Based Crop Insurance. This entails setting up of Automatic Weather Stations, which provide dynamic village-level data essential for settlement of weather based insurance claims.