A LINEAR PROGRAMMING APPROACH TO SUSTAIN GROUNDWATER BY OPTIMIZATION OF CROPPING PLANG. Arun Prasath, D. Velmurugan, R. Venkataraman and S. SathiyamurthiAbstract Groundwater is the predominant source of irrigation in several places where there are less surface water sources like river, streams, dams etc., Groundwater is available at the ease of disposal, which paves way for its continuous pumping. This continuous pumping of groundwater in some places exceeds annual quantity of groundwater recharge and the region is termed as over exploited region. Coimbatore district is one among them, where groundwater is extracted beyond its recharge and the district has 26 over-exploited firkas among the total 38 firkas. Hence Coimbatore district in the Western Agro-climatic zone of Tamil Nadu is purposively selected for this study. The objective of the study is to calculate the quantity of water available from different sources for irrigation, to compute the water requirements of different crops and to optimise cropping area for sustaining groundwater with increased profits. The study was based on secondary data with the application of CROPWAT software to compute crop water requirements and Linear programming for sustainable groundwater use in the study area. Total water available for irrigation from different sources and potential irrigable area by the sources were calculated. As area to be irrigated by dams and tanks reduces, there arises the need for excess groundwater causing overexploited regions. Hence optimised cropping area to sustain groundwater was computed. The results were to reduce the area under paddy and sugarcane and to increase the areas of less water consuming crops like pulses, millets, groundnut, maize, etc. The study concludes that the gap between potential irrigable area by dams and tanks and actual area irrigated by them to be reduced, bridged and optimized cropping plan may be followed to sustain groundwater. |