Soil Water Conservation Engineering Research in Citrus

Citrus is the third important fruit crop after banana and mango in terms of production in India. The citrus cultivation in India is dominated by three major cultivars viz. mandarin sweet orange and limes and lemons occupying an area of 7.12 lakh hectares with a total production of 59.96 lakh tons. Nagpur mandarin a premier citrus cutivar in India is grown in around of 1.27 lakh hectares area with a total production of 11.2 lakh tons. The average productivity of Nagpur mandarin (8.82 t/ha) is very low as compared to productivity (20-25 t/ha.) of other citrus growing countries like Brazil and USA. One of the major causes of lower productivity of citrus is shortage of irrigation water in critical water requiring stages of trees in post-monsoon period. Basically citrus is grown as an irrigated crop in different agro-climatic situations of India. Due to heavy demand of water in industrial use and drinking water purpose the percentage of agriculture water use is reducing day by day. Moreover due to indiscriminate use of ground water without adopting any rainwater conservation treatment and ground water recharging techniques the situation of water scarcity becomes more acute.