Investigating physiological and biochemical

2.1.2. Poor quality ground water 
Groundwater is the principal source of drinking water, agriculture industry and 
households (WWF, 2007). Punjab has 80 percent fresh ground water. Sindh has less 
than 30 percent fresh ground water. KPK has most of the layers of saline ground 
water while Balochistan also has saline ground water. Best estimates give a figure of 
500,000 operational tube wells in the Indus Basin (Ali et al., 2004). These tube wells 
are generally thought to be a reasonable source of fresh groundwater. However, total 
Indus basin contains fresh ground water reserves of about 55 MAF (South Asia water 
vision, country report 2001). Despite six times increase in diesel pumps over a period 
of 30 years, the ground water contributes only 48 percent of the water available. 
However, according to study conducted by Habib (2004) on analysis of water demand 
and supply, the water shortage in agriculture range from 10 MAF to 25 MAF in rainy 
and dry years respectively. 
Pakistan is facing an acute shortage of good quality irrigation water to raise crops 
(Ghafoor et al., 2001). Groundwater used as a supplement source of irrigation is 
mostly of poor quality owing to arid to semi-arid climate, low recharge rate and 
over-pumping of good quality ground water. About 6.79 × 10
10
m
3
groundwater is 
pumped, of which 70-75% is hazardous for irrigation (Latif and Beg, 2004) on the 
basis of the criteria of the Department of Agriculture, Punjab (Muhammed and 

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32 
Ghafoor, 1992). It is well known that in many areas of Sindh tube wells have been 
ceased due to pumping of saline water (Qureshi et al., 2011). 
Extensive use of saline water by the farmers of other countries including Pakistan 
is merely due to the severe shortage of canal water (Qadir et al., 2007). The irrigation 
with saline water not only reduces the productivity but also the quality of produce is 
badly affected (Latif and Ahmad, 2009).