Proceedings of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences: Part B Pakistan Academy of Sciences Life and Environmental Sciences 59(1): 57-68 (2022) Copyright © Pakistan Academy of Sciences ISSN (Print): 2518-4261; ISSN (Online): 2518-427X http://doi.org/10.53560/PPASB(59-1)690 Research Article ———————————————— Received: November 2021; Accepted: March 2022 *Corresponding Author: Sidra Majeed; <sidramajeed72@gmail.com> Adoption and Cost-beneft Analysis of Drip Irrigation for Production of High-Value Crops in Pakistan Abid Hussain 1 , Sidra Majeed 1* , Abdul Hassan 2 , Mohsin Ali Khathian 3 , Muhammad Zahid Ullah Khan 1 , Irum Raza 1 , and Jumo Khan Bajkani4 1 PARC-Social Sciences Research Institute, National Agriculture Research Centre, Islamabad 2 PARC-Social Sciences Research Institute, Agricultural Research Institute, Tarnab, Peshawar 3 PARC-Social Sciences Research Institute, Agricultural Research Institute, Tandojam 4 PARC-Social Sciences Research Institute, Agricultural Research Institute, Quetta Abstract: Drip irrigation is regarded as one of the highly efcient methods that allow limited water resources to be properly utilized. The study has been conducted to perform the economic analysis of low and high head drip irrigation systems throughout the country based on data from 100 adopters of drip irrigation through a research & development project funded by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA-Pakistan)/United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). A feld survey for the study was conducted in the year 2018 in all the provinces of Pakistan. The study revealed that technology is generally adopted by the farmers having diversifed income sources and medium-sized land holdings i.e. ranging from 12.5 to 25 acres. System installation cost-shared 11 percent in low-head drip system of the annual production cost of fruits. While, it shared 29, 32, and 27 percent in case of a high-head system for grapes orchards, vegetables in tunnels, and open felds, respectively. Low-head drip irrigation is proftable for dates/ lemon orchards in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with a beneft-cost ratio (BCR) of 1.27:1.00. It results in considerable proftability for grapes orchards with BCR of 1.73:1.00 and 1.32:100 in Punjab and Balochistan provinces, respectively. The low-head system is also benefcial for mixed fruit orchards in rain-fed Punjab with a BCR of 1.24:1.00. Similarly, for high-head systems, the beneft-cost ratio was the highest for grapes produced in rain-fed Punjab (2.62:1.00), followed by squash-gourd in irrigated Sindh (2.17:1.00) bitter-gourd in rain-fed Punjab (1.50:1.00) and okra in Sindh (1.22:1.00). However, low and high-head systems could not result in considerable returns for farmers in the case of mixed fruits in Balochistan and cucumber production in tunnels in Punjab province during the study year. Keywords: Adoption, Beneft-cost ratios, Drip Irrigation, Fruit, High-head, Low-head, Pakistan, Vegetable 1. INTRODUCTION Optimizing the use of water is critically important for the socioeconomic uplifting of people and the development of any country. In this perspective, increasing water scarcity and efcient use of existing water resources is becoming a global challenge [1]. As, irrigation is the artifcial application of water to crops through appropriate methods such as surface (basin, border, furrow), or pressurized (sprinkler, bubbler, drip) irrigation systems [2]. While, the irrigation system of Pakistan comprises of three major reservoirs, 16 barrages, two headworks and syphons each, 12 link canals, 44 canal commands, and more than 140,000 watercourses. Although Pakistan possesses one of the largest contiguous gravity fow irrigation networks, but it is confronted with many issues such as low irrigation efciency and water productivity, under-designed capacity, old infrastructure requiring extensive maintenance, water scarcity, inequity, etc. [1]. Basin or food irrigation has the lowest irrigation efciency (40- 50 %), while overhead methods like sprinkler and drip/trickle are efcient in irrigation application by 60-65 % and up to 90 %, respectively [2]. It is believed that an increase in water requirement due to the rising population and