Engineer's Den

I ndus Basin Irrigation System and it various Salient Features  (Barrages, Headwork, Canals, and Dams) Irrigation means the artificial way of watering the crops. Pakistan is highly dependent on agriculture, which in turn is dependent on water. Of the79.6 million hectares of land that makeup Pakistan, 20 million are available for agricultural. Of those 20 million hectares, 16 million are dependent on irrigation. It is estimated that up to 90% of Pakistan's agriculture is dependent on irrigation . 67% of our land is irrigated due to little rainfall. The most important means of our irrigation is our system of canals. The progress of our country depends upon the means of irrigation and their progress. All parts except northern mountains depend upon irrigation. Our canals irrigate 70% of our lands while 14% is left for tube-wells, Persian wheels Karez and ponds. Irrigation Pakistan is Blessed with natural surface water and abundance of ground water as it is the part of ...

2.1 Irrigation “Irrigation may be defined as the process of artificially supplying water to soil for raising crops”. It is a science of planning and designing an efficient, low cost, economic irrigation system tailored to fit natural conditions. It is the engineering of controlling and harnessing the various natural sources of water, by the construction of dams and reservoirs, canals and headwork’s and finally distributing the water to the irrigation fields.  (Jain) “Science of Artificial Application of Water to the land, in accordance to the ‘crop requirements’, throughout the ‘crop period’ for full fledge nourishment of crop” (SK GARG, 1999) “Irrigation is the art of applying water to the land by artificial means to fulfill the water requirement of crops in the areas where rainfall is insufficient.” (Iqbal Ali, 2010) 2.2 Crop water requirement (CWR): It is the total amount of water required by the crop in a given period of time for normal growth, under field condition...