Identifying Irrigation Strategies for Improved Agricultural Water Productivity in Irrigated Maize Production through Crop Simulation Modelling

Abstract

Abstract:Identifying irrigation strategies that improve agricultural water use efficiency (WUE) have a pivotal role to play in sustainable water development. In this study, the AquaCrop model was used to examine the impact of different irrigation scheduling options on yields to identify viable strategies to enhance WUE for irrigated maize. Two scheduling scenarios at water application depths ranging from 20 to 50 mm were investigated: schedules based on allowable depletion of total available water (TAW) in the root zone and interval schedules based on irrigating at predefined daily intervals. For both scenarios, simulated yields, seasonal water applied and percent percolation loss were within the range of 9.16 to 10.22 ton/ha, 180 to 950 mm and 0-61%, respectively. The WUE in terms of water applied (WUE Irr ) and crop evapotranspiration (WUE ET ) ranged from 1.07 to 5.48 kg/m 3 and 2.42 to 4.42 kg/m 3 , respectively. The results revealed that depletion levels of 40-50% TAW at water depths of 20-40 mm could be used to obtain high WUE without significant yield penalty. Moreover, a good balance between yield, improved WUE ET and percolation reduction was observed at water depths of 30-40 mm for daily intervals with water applied during the vegetative-reproductive stage of 7-5, 10-5 and 10-7. The identified strategies can contribute to the development of best management practices for water conservation.

Evaluation of Aquacrop Model in Simulating Bitter Gourd Water Productivity Under Saline Irrigation

“…The results of field experiments are usually site‐specific and may not be relevant to other sites because of diverse soil and environment conditions. Moreover, these experiments are costly and require a large number of field treatments (Greaves and Wang, ). Likewise, results of experiments are influenced by climatic conditions which may fluctuate from year to year, hence making evaluation of the amount of irrigation hard (Iqbal et al, ).…”

Influencing Factors of the Adoption of Agricultural Irrigation Technologies and the Economic Returns: A Case Study in Chaiyaphum Province, Thailand

“…The strategic approach of water management to improve the efficiency of water usage in agriculture may be impeded depending on the objectives of farmers emphasizing the increase in profitability or crop production [42].…”

Energy Consumption Optimization in Irrigation Networks Supplied by a Standalone Direct Pumping Photovoltaic System

“…The second stage involves calculating the shaft work required by the pumps in the network (Section 2.3) for every segment combination Equation (5). Moreover, the m potential cases (DPMs) are calculated with the aforementioned restrictions:…”

“…From the design and management of water irrigation networks standpoint, the fact that sustainable management of pressurized networks has become the key objective for water irrigation managers is reflected by the high number of studies dealing with improvements in water efficiency [3][4][5], with recent approaches dealing with energy optimization, including: methods for the sectoring of irrigation networks [6]; changes in the operating system, from scheduled to on-demand irrigation [7]; selection of new pumping systems; and/or, changes in the diameter of water sprinklers [8], etc.…”