Effect of Pulse Trickle Irrigation on Soil Moisture Distribution Patterns, Irrigation Efficiencies and Sunflower Productivity in Sandy Soils

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Researcher Ag. Eng., Res. Inst. Nady El-Said St. Dokki Giza, Minis. Ag. & Land Rec. Egypt.

Abstract

Two successive growing seasons of sunflower production were conducted at Yashaa village Al-Intlaq, West Delta, Egypt during 2009 and 2010 for evaluating either soil moisture distribution patterns or sunflower yield
under pulse irrigation technique. The split plot design with 4 replicates was used to achieve the study objectives, main plots were frequency treatments (daily "D1", every 2 days "D2" and every 3 days "D3") and subplots as times events were pulse (P) (10 min on 10 min off) and continuous (C) irrigation treatments.
Results indicated that the average amount of water was 3033.31 m3/fed for both treatments. Also there were no significant differences between the two irrigation techniques and the three irrigation period on saving applied water. The pulse trickle irrigation gave a good distribution of moisture content within the root zone, especially with irrigation every two days (D2) before and after irrigation during the different stages of plant growth. The pulsing trickle irrigation had the highest yield, and yield components. Also the lowest performance was obtained by the continuous treatment. The trend obtained indicates that every 2 days trickle irrigation might improve yields and yield components. The results revealed that the water use efficiency increased as the irrigation frequency increased from D1 to D2 with percent of 12.3 % then
decline for D3 with percent of 27.0 %. The results indicate that the application of pulsed irrigation led to improve the water storage efficiency in the effective root zone compared to the continuous irrigation,
although the continuous irrigation led to improvement of efficiency in the depths away from the root zone and horizontal distances not far to the emitter. The results refer that there is no significant differences between daily irrigation D1 and irrigation every two days D2 but water storage efficiency, significantly decreased with irrigation every three days D3 under both pulsed trickle irrigation and continuous irrigation.

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