CAMAGÜEY.- Before the loss of big volumes of water in the cultivation of rice, specialists of the Integrated Center of Technologies of the Water (CITA) of this province, contribute to the saving of this vital liquid with a project consisting of the calibration of hydro-technic works.

The intervention of engineers and technical staff of the said entity, assigned to the Managerial Group of Investigations, Projects and Engineering of the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources, includes important productive poles of this food in the provinces of Granma, Camagüey and Sancti Spíritus.

With the intention of measuring the water, of gliding, of executing and of processing the information that registers in the systems of irrigation of the rice, the project foresees the scales installation in the entry of the channels, for a more exact knowledge of the real quantity of the liquid that is given, told Héctor Moreno Guerra, specialist in Irrigation and Drainage.

Until now it has been evaluated 550 works in the Agro-industrial Complex Ruta Invasora in Camagüey, other 500 in the Agro-industrial Company of Granos Sur dl Jíbaro in Sancti Spíritus, and 26 in the Cuban-Chinese Mixed enterprise for the production of rice, named Taichi S.A. in Granma.

Today more than 200 thousand cubic meters of water are wasted in a rice field of 45 hectares, assured the specialist, at the time that he identified as the primary cause of this fact the measurement absence for the delivery of the liquid to the plantations.

This reality, he said, propitiates the indiscriminate use of the valued natural resource in dams, micro dams and the underground aquifer, which joined the consequences of the climate change that provokes less and less rain, brings pernicious consequences for the food production.

At present in Camagüey there take advantage scarcely 43 per cent of the water used in the rice plantations, considered like most consumed of all the cultivation in the world.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez