Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

JALKUND AN ALTERNATIVE POTENTIAL RAINWATER HARVESTING STRUCTURE IN WOKHA DISTRICT, NAGALAND – A CASE STUDY

Laishram Kanta Singh, Kangjam Sonamani Singh and S. Roma Devi

Abstract

Kitchen gardening is a common practice in the state of Nagaland. Nowadays, kitchen gardening is declining day by day and people are forced to depend on market vegetables and fruits in Nagaland. But there is still hope to regain kitchen gardening in the backyard through Jalkund, a low cost technology for water harvesting structure. Five numbers of on farm trial on Jalkund was conducted at different villages in Wokha district,Nagaland. Jalkund at Longsachung near National Highway (LNH) was having the highest crop cover area of 700 m2 and followed by Niroyo village (NV), Wokha near National Highway (WNH), Longsachung village (LV) and Vegetable village (VV) with crop cover area of 415 m2, 385 m2, 375m2 and 240.5 m2 respectively. The average water supply from five Jalkund was estimated at 55986 litres per year. Jalkund at Vegetable village (VV) performed best among all Jalkunds having BC ratio 2.53 followed by Longsachung near National Highway (LNH), Niroyo village (NV), and Longsachung village (LV) and Wokha near National Highway (WNH) with BC ratio of 2.25, 2.17, 2.00 and 1.73 respectively. The average net profit of all five Jalkund was estimated at `17340.00.Key words : Kitchen gardening, Jalkund, Water harvesting structure, Water requirement, Net profit, Unit cost of water.