Surge flow Performance for Furrow Irrigation under Upper Egypt Conditions

Abstract

The current study was conducted at The Experimental Farm, Fac. of Agric., Al-Azhar Univ., Assuit, Egypt (27° 12- 16.67= N latitude, 31° 09- 36.86= E longitude and at 51 m altitude) during the winter season of 2018 (September to December). The research work aimed to assess the performance of surge irrigation compared to the continuous one by measuring the advance rate of the wetting front, inflow/ outflow rates, distribution uniformity, application efficiency, suitable furrow length and surge numbers. Surge flow irrigation leads to a decrease in advance time compared to continuous flow. The reduction percentages in advance and recession time are more pronounced under low discharge rate and long furrow length. Surge flow irrigation used less amounts of water than continuous one. Surge flow could save almost one third of the applied water by continuous flow especially into long furrow with 5 surges of medium discharge rate. The larger discharge coupled with large furrow resulted in the maximum water saving of about 28% among all the other combinations. For all possible combinations, the volume ratio remained less than one indicating that less total water is required to complete the advance phase in surged irrigation compared to continuous one. Surge flow showed higher application efficiency than that of continuous one. The higher application efficiency (83%) was observed under 5 surges flow into 100 m furrow length with 1.2 L/S discharge rate. Water losses by deep percolation were more pronounced in short furrow length than that of long one and they were minimized by surge flow. Surge flow realized higher distribution uniformity (DU) than that of continuous one.