Abstract
This study was conducted in eight different regions of Saudi Arabia to estimate monthly and annual crop water requirements (CWR). Fields that have been selected are located in regions of the Medina (Al Ula), Tabuk (Teimaa), Makkah (Al Jumum), Al Jouf (Sakakah), Riyadh (Sodos), Qassim (Riyad Al Khabra), Hail (AL Kaedh), and East Region (Al Ahsa). The determination of CWRs was based on Penman Monteith method, field water balance, actual water applied in each field, and actual water applied by farmers in adjacent fields. The results based on Penman–Monteith method showed that the crop evapotranspiration, ETc (mm/year) of the sites in, Medina, Tabuk, Makkah, Al Jouf, Riyadh, Qassim, Hail, and East Region were 2418.75, 1940.51, 1837.76, 2259.03, 2139.23, 2207.41, 2008.23, and 2144.87 mm/year, respectively. The CWRs (m3/ha) after taking into account the proportion of cultivated area for each tree were: 9495.24, 7340.18, 7298.93, 8913.59, 8614.96, 8568.68, 7996.99, and 8510.72 m3/ha, respectively. The average date palm numbers were 100 trees/ha. The total annual CWRs (m3/tree) in these sites were 95, 73.4, 73, 89, 86, 85.7, 80, and 85 m3, respectively, as the radius of shaded area per tree is 3.5 m with an effective diameter of 90%, and the rate of leaching was 12, 8, 13, 12, 14, 11, 13, and 13%, respectively. The average overall irrigation water requirements was 8342.41 m3/ha/year (1 ha. = 100 trees). The results of water balance method showed that the water consumed for Qassim and Al Jouf was 3604.31 and 3515.25 m3/ha/year, respectively. The actual irrigation water added by a flow meter for all study sites was 11,305.0, 9463.9, 9692.0, 11,252.75, 1007.40, 10,035.0, 10,272.5, and 10,082.8 m3/ha/year, respectively, while these amounts added by the farmers in adjacent fields were 13,717, 12,277, 12,220, 13,340, 12,050, 12,880, 12,620, and 12,610 m3/ha/year, respectively.
Highlights
The agricultural expansion of date palm in Saudi Arabia faces huge challenges, which are typical of dry regions char‐ acterized with water scarcity, low rainfall and high evapo‐ transpiration demand
Al-Ghobari and El Marazky (2013) evaluated the accuracy of three commonly used soil water sensor types, to monitor volumetric soil water content and develop a means of improving irrigation scheduling; the results indicated that the tensiometers and Watermark sensors performed the best with the factory calibrations, with a RRMSE of 6.6, 7.6 and 8.5, and 8.6, 11.1 and 11.0%, respectively
The aim of present study was to: determine the date palm water requirements of eight regions of Saudi Arabia taking in the consideration the shaded area of the tree and irrigation water quality, and compare date palm water requirements with the actual water added by farmers in the eight regions
Summary
The agricultural expansion of date palm in Saudi Arabia faces huge challenges, which are typical of dry regions char‐ acterized with water scarcity, low rainfall and high evapo‐ transpiration demand. Due to the increases of water demand, an effective and accurate evaluation of crop water requirement (CWR) is essential for planning, designing, operating, managing farm irrigation systems. Evap‐ otranspiration (ET) plays a major role in irrigation water management (Allen et al 1998). They reported that many factors may play a role in limiting crop development; these are water availability, soil salinity, poor land fertility, poor soil and water management, plant density, and soil water contents. In Saudi Arabia, the limiting factor in agricultural development is water availability to irrigate the increasing number of date palm tree. For date palm ET estimation, the early work done by Furr and Armstrong (1956) estimated the annual ET to be
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