Abstract
Alternate moistube-irrigation is a new type of water-saving irrigation, and research on water infiltration with alternate moistube-irrigation is important for the design of irrigation schemes and helpful to understand and apply this technology. The effects of the pressure head (1.0 m and 1.5 m) and tube spacing (10 cm, 20 cm, and 30 cm between two moistubes respectively) on soil water infiltration in alternate moistube-irrigation were studied in laboratory experiments, and the cumulative infiltration, discharge of the moistube, and shape and water distribution of the cross-section of the wetting front were determined. The cumulative infiltration increased quickly and linearly with the infiltration time at 0-96 h (R2>0.99), and changed smoothly at 96-192 h with a basically steady infiltration rate. The discharge of the moistube increased rapidly at the beginning of irrigation, then decreased before stabilizing. The cumulative infiltrations and discharges of moistube under the 1.5 m pressure head were more than those under the 1.0 m pressure head. The shape of the cross-section of the wetting front for a single moistube was similar to a concentric circle. With the increase of tube spacing, the interaction between water infiltrations of two moistubes decreased. The soil water distributions around two moistubes were similar to each other under the 1.0 m pressure head and large tube spacing. When the tube spacing was 20 cm, the soil water distribution was more uniform around two moistubes. Keywords: alternate irrigation, moistube-irrigation, soil water infiltration, water use efficiency, water-saving irrigation DOI: 10.25165/j.ijabe.20201304.5297 Citation: Shen L X, Zhang Y M, Yang M, Liu R H. Effects of alternate moistube-irrigation on soil water infiltration. Int J Agric & Biol Eng, 2020; 13(4): 151–158.
Highlights
The shortage of freshwater resources has become a bottleneck of restricting agricultural development and global food security[1,2,3,4]
The effects of the pressure head (1.0 m and 1.5 m) and tube spacing (10 cm, 20 cm, and 30 cm between two moistubes respectively) on soil water infiltration in alternate moistube-irrigation were studied in laboratory experiments, and the cumulative infiltration, discharge of the moistube, and shape and water distribution of the cross-section of the wetting front were determined
When the tube spacing was S1, the soil wetting front of moistube 1 (M1) had moved to the vicinity of moistube 2 (M2) before M2 began to supply water, the cumulative infiltration of M2 was low due to high soil water content
Summary
The shortage of freshwater resources has become a bottleneck of restricting agricultural development and global food security[1,2,3,4]. In order to alleviate the contradiction between the shortage of freshwater resources and rising world food demand, many countries are actively developing water-saving irrigation methods[5,6,7]. Moistube-irrigation takes advantage of the special properties of semi-permeable membranes to provide timely and adequate moisture to crop root zones in a continuous flow mode so that soil is always kept moist[9,10,11]. The research on moistube-irrigation mainly includes two aspects: soil box simulation test and plant cultivation test. The plant cultivation test mainly focuses on the effects of pressure head, buried depth and spacing of tubes on crop growth and yield[13,14,15]. Most researches currently focus on conventional continuous irrigation, and researches on other irrigation modes are relatively rare
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