Water use efficiency of wheat crop under two water application methods

Abstract EN

A field experiment was carried out at the Farm of Soils and Water Research Department, Nuclear Research Center, Atomic Energy Authority, to compare between two water application methods used for accurate estimation of water needs by wheat crop.

Irrigation water was applied using a climate - based method (M1) and soil – based method (M2).

Applied water requirements, grain yield, water use efficiency and the amount of water lost by deep percolation were estimated.

The obtained results showed that the highest water use efficiency (1.41 kg m-3) was obtained by theM2 method while the highest values of lost water by deep percolation (11.49%) was detected with the M1 method.

Statistically, significant difference between the M1 and M2 was detected with grain yield, actual evapotranspiration, lost water by deep percolation and applied water.

The highest grain yield (7104.40 kg ha-1) was induced by theM2 method while the highest values of actual evapotranspiration, lost water by deep percolation and applied water quantities were achieved by M1 method.Generally, the estimated parameters were significantly varied according to certain soil water balance method.