Field Comparison of Infiltration in Conventional and Alternate Furrow Irrigation under Various Initial and Boundary Conditions

Abstract

AbstractA field study was conducted to evaluate the effect of two‐dimensional infiltration on management of conventional furrow irrigation (CFI) and alternate furrow irrigation (AFI). For this purpose, 48 infiltration tests were carried out in CFI and AFI under two different irrigation intervals (4 and 9 days) with two different water heads (5 and 10 cm). The results indicated that under higher water head and lower initial water content, cumulative infiltration is increased by up to 102 and 62% in CFI and by up to 106 and 54% in AFI, respectively. Moreover, by increasing the water head, the lateral infiltration in CFI and AFI increased by 5 and 4.5 times, respectively. For a lower initial water content, lateral infiltration can increase by up to 96 and 53% in CFI and AFI, respectively. In all cases, cumulative and lateral infiltrations in AFI were greater than in CFI. Furthermore, the relative lateral infiltration in AFI was more than CFI. In both CFI and AFI, the relative lateral infiltration increased for increased water head and extended irrigation intervals. Application of AFI with higher water heads and extended irrigation intervals can lead to increased lateral infiltration and decreased deep percolation, which will ultimately result in improved irrigation efficiency. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.