Drain for Gain: Making Water Management Worth its Salt: Subsurface Drainage Practices in Irrigated Agriculture in Semi-arid and Arid Regions

Salinity affects 10 to 16% of all irrigated lands while the annual rate of land loss due to waterlogging and salinity is about 0.5 million hectares per year. In this dissertation, the role of subsurface drainage to reduce these problems in irrigated agriculture in arid and semi-arid regions has been analysed and challenges for improving subsurface drainage practices have been formulated.

Although the installed subsurface drainage systems are in general technically sound and cost-effective, d...