Author(s):

Panda Arun Kumar, Galipothula Anil Kumar and K Vennela

Abstract: The water scarcity is expected to be aggravated further as fast decline of irrigation water potential in most of the countries especially in the arid and semi-arid regions of the world. As per the global survey, the worst affected areas would be the semi-arid regions of Asia (India), the Middle-East and Sub-Saharan Africa. The technique has a great water absorption capacity by its own weight which helps in improving soil moisture capacity and hence reduces water stress on the plant during prolonged drought stress condition and during irrigation intervals. Quantity of total water required for the irrigation is also reduced by 15 to 50% when the soil conditioning by SAP in different proportion is adopted. Considering the high cost and increasing prices of crude oil, the necessity of preparing natural based SAPs seems more obvious. This paves the way for further developments in this area in the mid and far future ahead. Today´s research has proved the ability of natural materials, e.g. Polysaccharides and Proteins, to perform super absorbent properties in pure Water and saline solution (0.9%wt.) within the same range as synthetic polyacrylates do in current applications. The agricultural sector (irrigation), which currently consumes over 80 percent of the available water in India, continues to be the major water-consuming sector due to the intensification of agriculture (Saleth, 1996). One of the main reasons for the low coverage of irrigation is the predominant use of traditional methods of irrigation, where water use efficiency is very low.

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