EFFECTS OF SCHEDULING TECHNIQUES OF WATER APPLICATION FOR DRIP IRRIGATION SYSTEM ON TOMATO YIELD IN ARID REGIO | ||
| Egyptian Journal of Agricultural Research | ||
| Article 31, Volume 96, Issue 1, March 2018, Pages 237-251 PDF (841.93 K) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/ejar.2018.132661 | ||
| Author | ||
| MOHAMED S. EL MARAZKY | ||
| Agricultural Engineering Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Giza, Egypt | ||
| Abstract | ||
| Irrigation is necessary in order to produce tomato in arid regions such as Saudi Arabia, with limited water supplies. Drip irrigation (DI) is being adopted in these areas to conserve water under economical crop production. Field experiment was carried out to study effects of different irrigation scheduling management strategies on fruit yield, quality of drip-irrigated fresh market tomatoes, water use efficiency and irrigation application efficiency. The experiment included three scheduling methods, which were used to irrigate tomato field: Evapotranspiration (ET) controller, soil moisture sensor (watermark sensor) and control treatment based on weather data. All irrigation-scheduling methods were effective, prescribing different amount of water for a given season. Irrigation amount increased from 841.5 mm (ET controller) to 882.60 mm (watermark sensor) and 1034.33 mm (control treatment), during two seasons. Both WUE and IWUE increased with decrease in irrigation water depth. The maximum average WUE (7.26 kg-m–3) and IWUE (4.66 kg-m– 3) values were for ET controller as average, during the two seasons. In addition, ET controller method conserved up to 7 % and 18% water compared to the watermark sensor and control treatments, respectively. Based on the above results, it is recommended that if the tomatoes are well irrigated based on ET controller, the farmer can get higher tomato yield in areas experiencing severe drought, such as Saudi Arabia. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Water usage efficiency; water application efficiency; automatic irrigation | ||
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