Abstract

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the impacts of varying furrow continuous flow rate and length of furrow on the performance parameters of furrow irrigation.

Materials and Methods: It was directed to qualify the degree of the relations by conducting a set of field trials to test and evaluate the hydraulic performance (Application "Ea", Distribution "Ed", Storage efficiencies "Es", Deep Percolation "DP" and Tail Water Losses "TWL") for three furrow lengths (120.140, 160 m), and three flow rates (2.7, 2, 1.5 L/s) using factorial design with three replicates (first, second and third irrigation).

Results: The statistical analysis of impacts of changing flow rate and furrow length on hydraulic performance indices indicated that the effect of furrow length was not statistically significant while it is highly significant for flow rate for all performance indicators. These implied that the designer has much freedom to select the furrow length that fit with field layout, but obliged to use non-erosive high flow rate. The Interaction between length and flow rate on was significant (P<0.05) and 120 m furrow length and 1.5 l/s flow rate gave highest Ea of 59.29% while Interaction of 120 m furrow length on 2.7 l/s flow rate resulted in improved Ed (87.1%) and the minimum Ea of 39% resulted from (160 m at 2.7 l/s) under clay soil..

Conclusion: The field data from three irrigations on changes of furrow cross-sectional areas concluded that the net rates of soil loss in the upper part of the furrow (head) were higher than the average net rate for the whole furrow. The soil loss was directly related to the in flow rate and inversely related to furrow length.

Statistics