Design and Development of a Low Cost Solar Powered Drip Irrigation System for Auchi Polytechnic Demonstration Farm

Auchi Polytechnic and the Communities surrounding her, have being experiencing significant issues with water scarcity and quality for many decades. Again, with the moribund state of the Water Corporation Service here in Auchi, there is an unprecedented demand for water concerns about water use by agriculture. Hence, a lot of farming activities takes place only during the raining season. This study aimed to design a solar powered borehole for drip irrigation system. Drip lines were laid, 2 mm holes was made at distance of 30 cm on the 6 m PVC pipes. Components of drip irrigation system consist essentially of main line, submains, laterals and emitters. The main line delivers water to the submains and the submains to the laterals. The set up was tested to determine the uniformity of water emission from the drip emitters into the field, maize, pepper, tomatos was used as the test crops and there was uniform growth observed across the entire field. The low cost drip system developed in this study showed a high level of efficiency and uniformity of water emission across the entire study area. Keywords: Low Cost Solar Powered, Irrigation System, Farm DOI: 10.7176/JNSR/11-18-05 Publication date:September 30th 2020