Evaluation of the yield and water use efficiency of the cucumber inside greenhouses

Abstract EN

The need to provide fresh and good quality products during long periods throughout the year lead to the adoption of using greenhouses technology, so protected cropping has become a very popular production system in horticulture especially nowadays in Iraq.

Evaluation the crop’s yield, water use efficiency and the irrigation system performance became essential.

The main objectives of this research were to evaluate the yield index and the water use efficiency for the cucumber inside the greenhouses, and evaluate the performance of the drip irrigation efficiency inside the greenhouses.

To accomplish these goals an experiment was conducted in the field located in AL-Mahawil Township in Babylon province .A set of measurements were recorded daily inside the greenhouses planting with cucumber for two consecutive seasons 2014 and 2015 related to weather parameters, crop evapotranspiration, drip system’s performance, and crop’s production.

From the conducted field work inside the greenhouses and the analysis of the field data, the following conclusions were withdrawn: daily cucumber’s crop evapotranspiration was measured using the watermarks sensors, the total crop evapotranspiration for the seasons 2014 and 2015 were: 218.21mm and 281.86mm, respectively.

The increasing in the crop evapotranspiration was due to change in weather parameters inside the greenhouses.

The cucumber’s yield index for seasons 2014 and 2015 was: 8.87 and 8.53 kg/m2, respectively, which was close values between the two seasons.

In this study, the yield index was high comparing with others approaches.

The water use efficiency for the seasons 2014 and 2015 were: 23.23 and 18.22 kg/m3, respectively, which were low values comparing with other approaches.

The reduction in the water use efficiency was due to the huge quantities of water applied through the seasons.

Additionally, the irrigation efficiency for the drip system in this study for the seasons 2014 and 2015 were: 65.8% and 65%, respectively, these efficiencies were low comparing with recommended values.

Managing water and schedule irrigation were the main factors affecting on crop’s growth and then on production.

Additionally, saving water was important to obtain high irrigation efficiency, best distribution of fertilizers and reduced crop’s diseases.