Water use efficiency of sugarcane under different plantation methods.

Sugarcane, (Saccharum officinarum L.) being a long duration crop produces huge amount of biomass thus requires large quantity of water. The potential sugarcane production depends upon optimum availability of water throughout the crop growth period. So it becomes necessary to judiciously use the already existing water resources by adopting appropriate irrigation technologies to increase sugarcane production not only per unit area but also per unit of water used. Therefore a study was conducted in the field of seed farm of Punjab Agricultural University, Ladhowal farm, Ludhiana during the year 2004–05 (main crop) and 2005–06 (ratoon crop) for sugarcane crop of variety CoJ88. The sets of different buds were placed under three different methods of plantation Le. furrow method, trench method and ring-pit plantation method. Each of the plantation method had four treatments each with normal seed (3 budded sett), double seed (3 budded sett), double seed (single budded sett) and transplanted seedlings. The irrigation was scheduled when cumulative pan evaporation (CPE) becomes 80 mm with IW/CPE ratio of one. The maximum water use efficiency of 4.95 q/ha-cm and 3.64 q/ha-cm was observed for trench plantation in years 2004–05 and 2005–06, respectively followed by ring-pit plantation in both the years. Minimum water use efficiency of 4.32 q/ha-cm and 2.90 q/ha-cm were observed with furrow plantation method during the year 2004–05(main crop) and 2005–06 (ratoon crop), respectively.