GULBARGA: The seven-day workshop on Rapid Appraisal Procedure (RAP) for Mapping System and Services for Canal Operation Technique (MASSCOTE) jointly organised by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations and Karnataka Neeravari Nigam (KNN) here has come out with series of recommendations for optimising the utilisation of water available in Bennethora Major Irrigation Project and Gandorinala Medium Irrigation Project in Gulbarga district and methods to introduce scientific water management technologies with the active participation of the command area farmers at all levels.

Chief Engineer of the Gulbarga Irrigation Project Zone R. Rudraiah told The Hindu here on Saturday that the workshop, which concluded on Friday night, was a trend setter for all irrigation projects in the State to adopt similar holistic approach for optimising the use of water available in the command areas.

Daniel Renault, Senior Management Officer in Land and Water Management division of the FAO in Rome and an expert in the modernisation of irrigation projects and P.S. Rao of FAO and also an expert in water management technology, studied the irrigation pattern and canal and distributary system of the Bennethora and Gandorinala projects during their field visits.

Mr. Rudraiah said the 27 senior engineers from different projects in the State participated in the workshop.

A similar exercise was conducted for the Ghataprabha Irrigation Project a few days ago by the FAO and the officials implementing the project had accepted the recommendations made in the workshop and had prepared an estimate for the modernisation of the Ghataprabha Irrigation Project and were in the process of submitting the same to the Government for implementation.

One of the major recommendations of the workshop here was that the officials should immediately take up work on identifying sites for off line buffer storage and recycling facilities in the command areas to ensure adequate provision of water for tail end farmers.

The workshop felt the need for conducting studies on groundwater potential in the command area.

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