Determination of Bed Width of Furrow Irrigation under Wheat at Tibla and Ketar-Genat Irrigation Scheme, Arsi Zone, Ethiopia

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of different bed width on yield and water productivity of wheat from (2022-2023) year at Tibila and Ketar-Genet irrigation scheme. Four bed widths (100cm, 80cm, 60cm and 40cm) were arranged in Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications. Recently released bread wheat variety king-bird was used as test crop. From the result, it is found that, Planting wheat on different bed width had a substantial impact on wheat yield and water productivity of the crop. In this study, the highest grain yield (6.23tha-1 ) were obtained when the bread wheat was grown under T2 (60cm bed-width) at Tibila irrigation Scheme. Whereas, the highest grain yield (5.93tha-1 ) were obtained when the bread wheat was grown under T3 (80cm bed-width) treatments at Ketar-Genat irrigation scheme. In general, the result displayed the production of wheat under 60cm bed width with 14% yield advantage at Tibila and 80cm bed width 16.3% yield advantage at the Ketar-genat irrigation scheme as compared to extremely wider (T4) and farmer irrigation practice (T1) respectively. The water productivity among the treatment were also determined in this study where; highest value of 1.05kg m-3 was recorded in T2, at Tibila and T3 (1.21 kg m−3 ) at Ketar-Genat irrigation scheme. Here, the result revealed that water productivity was significantly affected by soil characteristics and the width of the bed. The 60cm bed width produced 17.1% in loam soil and 80cm bed width produce 26.4% in clay soil higher water productivity as compared to farmer practice (T1) at Tibila and Ketar-genet irrigation scheme respectively. T2 (60cm bed-width) and T3 (80cm bed-width) were the best treatment to obtain an optimum yield and maximum water use efficiency in Tibila and Ketar-Genat irrigation scheme, respectively. Therefore, it was recommended to the farmer of Tibla irrigation scheme to use 60cm bed width and 80cm bed width for Ketar-Genat irrigation scheme to enhance production and productivity of wheat in the study area.