Abstract
The use of urban treated wastewater for agriculture is one of the most important parts of unconventional water use in arid and semi-arid regions, but the proper situation for its application needs to be considered. For this purpose, a study aimed at comparing five levels of water requirement including well water (control) (T1), urban treated wastewater (T2), 50% well water combination and 50% urban treated wastewater (T3), alternating irrigation between well water and urban treated wastewater each watering (T4), and combination of 33% well water and 66% urban treated wastewater (T5) in a randomized complete block design with three replications on water use efficiency and cotton yield. The study was conducted in a selected farm located in Torbat-Heydarieh southeastern Iran during two cropping years (2013 and 2014). Then, a hybrid tree growth optimization algorithm (TGO) and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) were used to predict cotton yield from four independent variables: soil characteristics, well water irrigation, urban treated wastewater irrigation, and meteorological data. Experimental treatments significantly altered soil chemistry. Cottonseed weight, cotton yield, and the number of bolls increased during the second year of treatments. A Duncan’s test of the mean showed that T3 significantly outperformed the other treatments measured as cottonseed weight, cotton yield, number of bolls, and water use efficiency. Overall, treatments utilizing treated wastewater outperformed the control, irrigation with well water. Additionally, based on the modeling results irrigation with an equal ratio of the well and treated wastewater resulted in improving soil and cotton growth conditions and yield during the study.
Highlights
Population growth and increasing demand for agricultural products stress limited water resources in arid regions (Sepaskhah et al 2006)
The results showed that the effect of irrigation water type on potassium (K), phosphorus (P), nitrogen (N), and salinity ions and acidity were significant, respectively
Treatment T3 (50% well water combination and 50% urban treated wastewater) showed the highest values for cottonseed weight, cotton yield, number of bolls, and water use efficiency (WUE) for 2 years compared to treatment T1
Summary
Population growth and increasing demand for agricultural products stress limited water resources in arid regions (Sepaskhah et al 2006). A solution to address limited water supply in agriculture uses wastewater for crop irrigation (Haj Hashemkhani et al 2014). The use of urban treated wastewater (UTW) to enhance crop output has been examined using various statistical and experimental methods (Hassanoqli 2002; Safari and Fathi 2008; Hasanpour Darvishi 2010; Rajabisorkhani and Ghaemi 2012; Shafaqkalvang et al 2015; Safa and Samarasinghe 2011; Trigui et al 2011; Fortin et al 2011; Basso et al 2013; Gonzalez-Sanchez et al 2014). Applied Water Science (2022) 12:66 investigated the effect of treated wastewater (at four levels of 25, 50, 75, and 100%) and nitrogen (at four levels of 0, 150, 300, and 450 kg/ha) on the chemical properties of soil and cotton plant. The results showed that the effect of different levels of nitrogen on all parameters was significant (N was more important than UTW in the soil chemistry and cotton output). Emami and Choopan (2019) examined the performance of barley under wastewater irrigation using RBF and GFF models of artificial neural network, and concluded that the RBF model had a high potential in estimating the barley yield irrigated with wastewater
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