TIRUCHY: The Senior Agricultural Technocrats recommended that the state government initiate steps to provide proper advice to plan the cultivation with the available water sources and ensure complete cultivation and achieve the target.
The committee comprising senior technocrats P Kalaivanan, P Venkatesan, V Palaniappan and V Kaliyamurthy welcomed the announcement of the release of water from Mettur on June 12, and recommended that the state government advise the farmers to undertake the cultivation to achieve the target. They said the kuruvai target can be fixed at 5.25 lakh acres, while samba can be fixed at 9.30 lakh acres and thalady at 4.50 lakh acres.
"To achieve the target, we need at least 330 TMC water to cultivate kuruvai, samba and thalady, but the storage is just at 76 TMC, of which only 70 TMC can be utilised for irrigation. The state government must get the due 167.25 TMC water from Karnataka," he said.
They also suggested that the farmers ensure maximum use of groundwater and cultivate at least 4 lakh acres of kuruvai with the groundwater. The government should create awareness among the farmers to opt for direct sowing during samba and complete kuruvai nursery planting by June 30 and samba by August 15 so that the crops would escape monsoon, they said.
The senior technocrats also appealed to the state government to ensure desilting of C and D canals and branch canals to ensure free water flow till the tail-end regions.