Allocation of Canal Water Optimally Employing OPTALL Model

摘要

Water is one of the most important inputs for agricultural production. But due to wide variation in its spatial and temporal availability, it is not always possible to apply it to the crop when it is essentially required. Sometimes, in spite of sufficient water availability in the reservoir, water is not released, distributed and allocated timely, adequately and equitably among the farmers due to many technical, hydraulic, socio-economic, institutional, financial and managerial problems as mentioned by Upadhyaya [1] and discussed in detail by Upadhyaya [2]. This leads to wide gap between water supply and water requirement in the canal command, resulting in either water logging or agricultural drought. Both the situations are detrimental and adversely affect the crop yield. This clearly indicates that there is sufficient scope to made water available to farmers in adequate quantity at right time, if canal managers properly plan, manage and release water as per crop water requirement. Upadhyaya [3] has mentioned number of water management technologies in agriculture to improve water productivity. In this paper, optimal and equitable releases of water in the distributaries of Patna Main Canal under various scenarios of water availability by employing OPTALL model have been presented and gap between actual and optimal releases has been assessed for conjunctive use planning.