Improving Canal Water Deliveries with Auxiliary Storage

Abstract

The temporal distribution of an irrigation water delivery and demand ratio was used to analyze the performance of an irrigation water delivery system in the Bhakra Canal Command in India. A high degree of mismatch was found to exist between water demand and supply. Based on historical canal deliveries, agroclimatic data, and crop production with dated inputs, yields of wheat, a major irrigated crop of the region, were simulated over a period of 20 years. It was found that crop production was constrained by 34% (20‐year average) due to unfavorable water delivery characteristics. An evaluation was made of introducing auxiliary storage at the farm outlet level to modify the water delivery schedule. Based on the increase in crop yield due to improved distribution of water supply delivery and the cost of auxiliary storage (including the cost of pumping), it was found that auxiliary storage could be used to considerable economic advantage.