Drip irrigation system: useful technique to improve chili production

Abstract

Abstract The effects of climate change such as continuing reduces of the water availability and quality contributed to the declining the agricultural production. The production of chili, one of the vegetable commodities that high economic value in Indonesia, are also affected by this limited water availability. The current research to develop technology on the drip irrigation utilization aims to increase chili production using efficient water technology. The experiment was carried out at the Margahayu Research Station, Lembang, West Java, Indonesia (± 1,250 m asl) from May to November 2021. The T test design with two treatments i.e. (A) manual irrigation and (B) drip irrigation and four replications were implemented in this experiment. The use of drip irrigation could save the water used and irrigation time by 40.12% and 80% respectively during the vegetative phase and 37.11% and 77.78% respectively during the generative phase compared to those in manual irrigation. Further, the drip irrigation method could increase crop yields by 8.39%, reduce chili production costs by 13.04% and increase farmer income by 9.25% compared to manual irrigation. The incidence of bacterial fruit rot disease could be reduced using the drip irrigation method.