Faridkot
“Since the Punjab preservation of sub soil water act 2009 has been passed, the depletion of the sub soil water has come to down to half,” said Dr Amrik Singh, chief agriculture officer Faridkot appealing the farmers not to go for paddy transplantation before June 10, the fixed date by the government.
“The sub soil water depleted at the rate of 25 centemetres per year between 1990 to 2000. And depletion of the ground water went up to three fold, 84 centimeters between 2000 and 2008. But since the government enacted the law to fix dates from June 10 or 15 from2009, the rate of the depletion of sub soil water has almost come to 50 per cent which is optimistic for the future,” said Amrik Singh.
He appealed the farmers not to do the transplantation before June 10 and try to delay it upto June 20 for better yield of PR varieties. PR 126, which is a very less water consuming variety, will even be transplanted from July 20 onwards.
The Punjab government had banned water guzzling Pusa 44 last year which was trasplated by the farmers on the fixed dates or before.