Vol. 12, Issue 3 (2023)

Author(s):
Dr. BL Sinha and Shashikant

Abstract:
Efficient use of energy especially in agriculture is one of the vital important issues in most countries. Today’s agricultural production relies greatly on the consumption of non-renewable energies such as fossil fuel. Energy Audit attempts to balance the total energy inputs with its use and serves to identify all the energy streams in the systems and quantifies energy usages according to its discrete function. Energy Audit helps in energy cost optimization, water control, safety aspects and suggests the methods to improve the operating & maintenance practices of the system. Hence, a field experiment was conducted to work out the energy requirement for cultivation of papaya under drip irrigation with different fertigation levels during the year 2020-21 at Borsi Instructional Farm of Dau Kalyan Singh College of Agriculture and Research Station, IGKV, Bhatapara (C.G.). The experiment was laid out in the randomized block design with nine treatments combinations and three replications. The experiment comprised of nine treatments under drip method of irrigation with combination of three irrigation regimes viz. 60, 80 and 100 percent of cumulative pan evaporation (CPE), three different levels of fertilizer 80, 100 and 120 percent of recommended dose of fertilizer (RFD). Energy equivalents (extracted from scientific source) were used to calculate energy balance and indices. The results on energy use pattern depicted that maximum input energy, output energy, energy ratio input and energy productivity were found to be 135195 MJ ha^-1, 405919.8 MJ ha^-1, 3.00, and 1.06 kg MJ^-1 respectively in treatment irrigation of 100 percent of CPE and fertigation of 120 percent of RDF. It was also found that the minimum energy of 0.95 MJ was required to produce one kg of papaya in this treatment.