LAGAWE, Ifugao-At least 170 Ifugao irrigator-farmers from different irrigators’ associations in the province were trained on Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD), a water savings technology that reduces water usage while maintaining yields, last week.
The National Irrigation Administration-Cordillera said that the AWD is a water management strategy, practiced to cultivate irrigated rice with much less water than the usual system of maintaining continuous standing water in the crop field.
The implementation of AWD involves using an observation well or a ‘field water tube’ (‘pani pipe’) to monitor the status of field water above the ground and within the root system. In this process, rice fields are flooded to a lesser extent, allowed to dry to a predetermined level, and then subsequently reflooded.
Other trainings were also done to irrigators associations of Hapid Irrigation System in Hapid, Ajjang Tuwali in anopdopan, both of Lamut, and Sto. Domingo, Alfonso Lista, also in Ifugao.#
