IMPACT OF HYDROGEL ON AGRICULTURE – A REVIEWAshok K. Saini and Sachin H. MalveAbstract Water is one of the most essential natural resource, which is often costly and limiting particularly in aridand semi arid regions. Under climatic changing scenario, fresh water resources at global level issynchronizing day by day and creating water scarcity and transforming more irrigated area to rainfed. Theuse of water holding amendments like hydrogel polymer enhancing the water and nutrient use efficiencyand will become more important over time, especially in arid and semi arid region. Hydrogel has uniquecharacteristics that it retains water and nutrient from their surrounding area and will help in alleviatingmoisture stress of crop plants during prolonged dry period and where irrigation facilities are available thistechnology could reduce the number of irrigation applied to crops. The dose of hydrogel as suggested inthe literature varies from 2.5 to 5 kg/ha depending on the soil texture. A lower dose is recommended forclayey soil while a higher dose is recommended for sandy soil. Nowadays water management is consideredas one of the biggest challenge in arid and semi arid region of world, in fact by 2030 global water demandprobably to be 50% higher than today, resulting in water scarcity. Many research finding confirmed thathydrogel not only used for saving of water/irrigation, but also have tremendous potential to improve thephysical and biological properties of soil. In this paper, responses of hydrogel polymers on various cropsare reviewed. |