The main objective of watershed in arid zone of Rajasthan is to enhance land productivity and to increase the water-table. The watershed concept is very old in arid region. During, fifieenth century, nearly 500 watersheds in the form of ‘Khadin” with different size irrigated nearly 12,140 ha of crop land in Jaisalmer district of arid region of Rajasthan. Similarly, roof water harvesting is also very old. After the introduction of tap water drinking facilities, it disappeared from urban area and up to some extent also from rural areas. After 1987, nearly 1710 watersheds have been constructed in arid zone of Rajasthan at the cost of Rs.1465.8 m. A Jhawar watershed was selected purposely (as it was constructed by CAZRI for demonstration) situated nearly 25 km away from Jodhpur city. The total area of Jhawar watershed was 4600 ha spread in five villages, namely, Bujawar, Jhawar, Choka, Rohila Kalan and Doli. The total expenditure incurred was only Rs.3.l04 lakh which was recovered within one year i.e. Rs.7.96 la.kh was generated only from crop activities. Another Rs.6.00 lakh was generated from sale of river silt every year. The cropping intensity was 123.1% under flood irrigation which increased to 158.1% under sprinkler irrigation. About 61man days were additionally generated from sprinkler irrigation system. The water-table increased within the vicinity of 2.5km after which it declined due to construction of watershed. Earlier water used to flow all the way. During the drought condition, watershed is totally a failure phenomenon as water is even not available in the form of run-off.

An experiment was conducted from 1994 to 1997 on community pasture land which was completely degraded and there was only Aristida species in small patches at Kotri watershed. For improving the productivity and sustainable grass production on degraded land, two methods of seeding (pelleted and non platted) with nine treatments of legumes and non legumes grasses and their mixtures in split plot design with three replications were taken. The grass productivity had significantly increased under pelleted as compared to seeding method. Cenchrus ciliaris and Cenchrus setigerus alone and mixture with Stylo in 75:25 ratio also gave significantly higher grass yield as compared to other grass mixtures but at par with C. setigerus + S. hamata (50:50).