Water harvesting for plant production

Reij, C. and Mulder , P. and Begemann, L. (1988) Water harvesting for plant production. Technical Report. World Bank, Washington, USA.

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Abstract

This report is the most comprehensive review to date of available literature on water harvesting forplant production. It covers a broad range of topics, including terminology and classification, environmental factors, production aspects and socio-economic issues. Although the report covers publications from various continents, special attention is paid to information on water harvesting insub-Saharan Africa. It is quite commonly believed that water harvesting can significantly increase plant production in the arid and semi-arid tropics. The report, however, indicates that the available information does not always support this view. In several countries, substantial research has beendone on specific water harvesting techniques, and interesting yields have been obtained at research stations, but these techniques have not been adopted on a significant scale by farmers. Most water harvesting projects in sub-Saharan Africa are still carried out on a trial and error basis. They donot systematically monitor the impact of water harvesting on yields and sometimes promote packages costing more than $1,000/ha, which significantly reduces their replicability. It is recommended that water harvesting packages be based as much as possible on indigenous techniques and localenvironmental knowledge

Item Type:	Monograph (Technical Report)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Water harvesting; Africa South of the Sahara; Arid regions; Environmental factors; Cost benefit analysis; Sociological analysis; Extension; Training, RP6881
Author Affiliation:	World Bank
Subjects:	Plant Production
Divisions:	General
Depositing User:	Mr Daneti Raju
Date Deposited:	16 Mar 2014 04:54
Last Modified:	16 Mar 2014 04:54
URI:	http://eprints.icrisat.ac.in/id/eprint/12599

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