Irrigation Advisory Services for Farmers of Pakistan Science in Service of Mankind

Abstract

The Holy Qur’an highly stresses upon the need to serve humanity in all possible ways. Describing the characteristic and superiority of a Muslim, the Holy Qur’an says: “You are the best people ever raised for the good of mankind because you have been raised to serve others; you enjoin what is good and forbid evil and believe in Allah” (3:111) Similarly, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) repeatedly stressed upon doing good to the humanity irrespective of the race, religion and color. He promoted kindness, gratitude and doing good to develop a harmonious and peaceful society. As per the golden footprints of his master the Promised Messiah (PBUH) has had a great compassion for mankind. He said, “Sympathy for all mankind is a moral obligation and a duty; a religion is no religion which does no inculcate sympathy, nor does that man deserve to be called a man who does not have sympathy in him (message of peace).”The obligation of scientists and engineers greatly increases in this fast commercializing world, where research is mostly done for the sake of research, earning IF instead of making an impact on the society and mankind. There are always means and ways by which scientific research can actually benefit mankind. Irrigation Advisory Services (IAS) launched by Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) is a similar endeavor, which is now improving livelihood of a common farmer in Pakistan.More than 90% of the agriculture value added of Pakistan comes from irrigated agriculture. However, farmers are facing acute water shortage during the last couple of decades. The present irrigation water deficit of about 15% is expected to increase to 30% by 2025. A major portion of irrigation water losses (40%) takes place in fields because of over-irrigation due to an outdated mindset of farmers that more water would produce more yields. This takes toll in terms of groundwater mining as farmers over-irrigate in pursuit of increasing production.Irrigation scheduling is the art of applying right quantities of water at the right time. However, knowledge of crop water requirement (CWR) is necessary. A simplified approach to estimating crop water requirements (ETc) is linking it with reference evapotran spiration (ETo) by a crop coefficient (Kc). PCRWR has determined Kc of all the major crops through lysimetric studies, which is the most reliable method. On the other hand, remote sensing techniques have made it possible to estimate real time ETo of the recent past. Numerical weather prediction (NWP) based weather forecasting can also forecast ETo and rainfall for the short-term future. These two techniques were recently developed for PCRWR, in collaboration with University of Washington, Seattle, USA to estimate weekly crop water requirements of different crops.PCRWR launched the Irrigation Advisory Services for farmers of d