Abstract
The study was conducted at the experimental field of Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam during the year 2013, with the hypothesis that saline water can successfully be used for growing bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L) in soil and climatic conditions of Sindh. In this study, the saline water was used with raised bed furrow irrigation method and the soil texture was silt loam. The randomized complete block design (RCBD) with four treatments (I1, I2, I3 and I4) and three replications was laid in the study. I1 was fresh water, I2, I3 and I4 water were with ECw 3dS/m, ECw 4dS/m and ECw 5dS/m respectively. The seeds were sown on both sides of ridge at a depth of 2-3 cm. Plant to plant distance of 40-45 cm was maintained. Irrigation media was prepared by mixing NaCl for required ECw in drums then applied to the experimental plots. The interval among each irrigation was kept 7 days. The experiment results revealed that, the average soil ECe increased 0.09, 0.57, 0.96 and 1.47dS/m in I1, I2, I3 and I4 respectively. pH decreased as 0.2 with I1, I2, I3 treatments and 0.3 with I4 treatment. The infiltration rate (cm/h) and porosity (%) were increased, thus the dry density (g/cm3 ) of soil profile decreased. The average yield of bitter gourd was obtained 11.47, 9.65, 7.92and 6.76 kg with treatments I1, I2, I3 and I4, respectively, thus the yield of crop was decreased as 15.84%, 30.95% and 41.07% with treatments I2, I3 and I4 (saline water) when compared to treatments with freshwater (I1) irrigation. Agronomical data were observed decreasing with the increasing ECw of the irrigation water. The crop water productivity (CWP) for treatments I1, I2, I3 and I4 was found 3.07, 2.58, 2.12 and 1.81 kg/m3 , crop water productivity decreased with use of saline water. The present study suggests that farmers can use saline water having ECw ≤ 5dS/m for the bitter gourd at reduction of 41% (approximately) of the production.
