Abstract
Water is scarce resource in Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia and is major limiting factor for crop production. The field experiment was conducted in 2018 at Melkasa Agricultural Research Center during the off-season to identify irrigation method and irrigation application level that maximizes productivity of onion per unit of water consumed and enhanced onion crop production. The experiment was carried out using split plot design in RCBD having three replications. The experiment consisted of two irrigation methods viz., furrow and drip irrigation as main plot and three levels of manageable allowable depletion viz., 120%, 100% and 80% as sub-plot. The ANOVA revealed that their interaction had a significant (p<0.01) effect on bulb diameter, total bulb yield, marketable bulb yield and water productivity. The maximum total bulb yield (41.76 t/ha), marketable bulb yield (38.39 t/ha), bulb diameter (6.02 cm) and water productivity (13.05 kg/m3) were observed from drip irrigation method at 80% management allowed depletion application, while significantly lower of 34.48 t/kg, 31.6 t/ha, 5.11 cm, and 6.84 kg/m3 respectively were recorded from furrow irrigation method at 120% management allowed depletion application. Among all tested treatments drip irrigation method with 80% MAD was the best practice because of its high yield, water productivity.
Highlights
Water is man kind’s most vital and versatile natural resource
The drip irrigation (DI) method resulted in increased leaf number by 7.7 % as compared to furrow irrigation (FI) method
The bulb yield obtained from Furrow irrigation method with 100% of management allowed deficit had no significant difference with drip irrigation method with 120% of management allowed deficit
Summary
Water is man kind’s most vital and versatile natural resource. It is considered as an essential resource for irrigation. Irrigation is an artificial application of water to soil for the purpose of supplying the moisture essential in the plant root-zone to prevent stress that may cause reduced yield and/or poor quality of harvest of crops [1]. Irrigated agriculture is the largest water-consuming sector and it faces competing demands from other sectors, such as the industrial and the domestic sectors. With an increasing population and less water available for agricultural production, the food security for future generations is at stake. The key challenge for future is growing more food with less water by way of increasing crop water productivity (CWP). A higher CWP results in either the same production from fewer water resources, or a higher production from the same water resources, so this is of direct benefit for other water users [2]
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