USING BISM MODEL TO CALCULATE WATER REQUIREMENTS FOR SOME VEGETABLE CROPS IN EGYPT

Abstract

Agriculture water demand is one of the serious pressures on watersector in Egypt, since 85% of total available water is consumed inagriculture and most of the on-farm irrigation systems are low efficientcoupled with poor irrigation management. The objective of this paper is tocalculate water requirements for 12 vegetable crops grown in 17Governorates in Egypt. These crops were cabbage, celery (winter andsummer), spinach, potates (winter and summer), carrot (winter andsummer), cucumber (winter and summer), pepper (winter and summer),strawberry, eggplant (winter and summer), tomato (winter and summer),sweet melon and artichoke. BISm model was used to calculateevapotranspiration, crop factor and crop evapotranspiration for each crop ineach Governorate. The BISm application calculates ET using the PenmanMonteith equation, water requirement for each crop was calculated undersurface irrigation with application efficiency 60%. The results showed thatusing BISm to calculate water requirements of some vegetable crops inEgypt were low values in the Nile Delta Governorates, in the other hand, itsstarted to increase as we go to south (Middle and Upper Egypt), theseresults could be useful for farmers, extension workers and large farmsproduce vegetables for export. Large applied amount of irrigation water tovegetables could negatively affect quality. Thus, it is very important tocalculate water requirements for important crops, such as vegetable crops.