Effect of Water Harvesting with Runoff Strip Method on Lentil Yield in Şanlıurfa Province

Abstract

Water harvesting is crucially important for arid regions where the deficits in rainfall are irregular and a great amount of this water is rapidly lost due to surface runoff. In the arid areas, water harvesting is directly related to process of plant growth and conservation of soil and water. Water harvesting is based on the principle of preventing a part of the land, which is usually small and non-productive, from getting the share of rain and adding it to the share of another part. This makes the amount of water available for the crop area and thereby contributes to economic and agricultural production. The most important land-based on micro catchments and farm water-harvesting systems in the arid areas are Contour ridges, Semi-circular and trapezoidal bunds, Small pits, Small runoff basins, Run-off strips, Inter-row systems, Meskat, and Contour-bench terraces. In this study, firstly, a detailed review on on-farm water-harvesting systems was performed. Secondly, a field experiment was carried out to determine the effect of water harvesting with run-off strip method on lentil yield. The experiment was conducted in Soil and Water Research Station, Sanliurfa, Turkey. The area had low rainfall (370 mm year-1) and high evaporation (2048 mm year-1). Conventional and runoff strip method were applied with tree replication on plot of 12x2.8 m under the same condition. The straw and seed yields of control and Strip Plots application were 2663.7 and 4602 kg ha-1, and 565.5 and 1160.1 kg ha-1 respectively. The results show that the runoff strips method increased straw and grain yield significantly. In addition, recent studies have proved that runoff strip method has the potential to hinder soil erosion by promoting water and crop productivity.