A field experiment has taken place in Wahet El-Nagah farm, Khatatba village, Menoufia governorate, Egypt in the year 2005, in order to use the ability of rice-straw mulching as cheap farm residue, to reduce the effect of deficit irrigation on highly sensitive crop for water deficit. Split plot design consisted of soil surface covering case (rice straw mulching (500g/m 2 ) and no-mulch) as main plot with four amounts of applied water 70, 80, 90, and 100% of ET c as sub-plot. Cucumber crop was irrigated by drip irrigation system under sandy soil conditions. Using rice straw mulch led to decrease the soil moisture reduction by 66, 57, 48.9, and 38 % compared with nomulch treatments for the 70, 80, 90, and 100% of ET c respectively. All rice straw mulch treatments showed a productivity increase compared to nomulch. The maximum crop yield 8.24 Mg/fed was obtained under rice straw mulching and 100% of ET c percentage causing a 29.6% increase in productivity compared with the crop productivity obtained at the treatment of same amount of applied water under traditional conditions. Rice straw mulch led to increase water use efficiency (WUE) the maximum value of WUE under rice straw mulch was 6.55 kg/m 3 with 90% of ET c while it was 4.37 kg/m 3 under the same conditions with no-mulch. Maximum benefit-cost ratio, 2.92 was obtained under rice straw mulch with 90% while it was 2.86 for nomulch with 100%. The study recommended using rice straw mulch with 90% of ET c to obtain the maximum product of unit of water and maximum economic benefit.
A field experiment was conducted with the purpose of testing and evaluating the use of a closed-loop, real-time control system which was developed by (Elnemr M.K., 2017) for application to a poor hydraulic performance drip irrigation system with sandy loam soil cultivated with cucumber crop. This control system collects soil moisture data through three sensors distributed along each third of the lateral. The control system was based on calculating the average soil moisture content (MC) of the three readings and using it as an indicator to start or stop irrigation process according to the requirements of the plant. The control system will start the pump after the depletion of allowed MC percentage of available water which is one of the required inputs to operate the control system. The irrigation process continues until reaching the field capacity (FC) value. The study compared two management methods for the irrigation system. First one was using the proposed control system (Aum) and the other one was manual operation based on calculating water requirement from climatic data (Clm). Using the proposed control system led to increase cucumber crop production by 23.8% of Clm productivity. The control system led to save water and seasonal irrigation time. This led to increase water productivity and energy use efficiency of Aum if compared to Clm by 41.71% and 110% respectively. Despite the added cost to the irrigation system because of the control system, the benefit/cost ratio for Aum was higher by 24.39% due to the decrease in energy and labour costs in addition to the increase in crop production. The study recommended using the researched control system with drip irrigation systems which show poor hydraulic performance to reduce negative effects on crop production and to reach more efficient use for both water and energy with keeping the opportunity to increase benefit/cost ratio. Further studies should be done on the system with drip irrigation system that work under acceptable ranges of hydraulic performance. Also, further studies should be done to investigate the most effective and suitable distribution of the sensors along lateral.
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