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Two fundamental factors contribute to Egypt's food security challenge: the rapidly growing population and the limited availability of agricultural land. Expanding agricultural land in Egypt is tightly constrained by the availability of water. This research aimed to develop an optimization model for the determination of cropping patterns to get the maximum profits of EL-Behaira governorate in winter season. Decision variables are the governorate total cultivated area, soil type, soil salinity, available water, potential crop yield, crop tolerance to salinity, irrigation system efficiency and irrigation water salinity. The objective function of the model is based on crop-salinity production function, crop value and production total costs. The model is solved using solver application of Microsoft Excel. The model gives the optimal distribution of crops area, water and profits. Four scenarios were introduced. Two represent un-restricted solutions; means that the objective function based on the maximum income as a function of crop value, tolerance to salinity and available water only. The other two scenarios take into account local market requirements and food security. Seven winter crops were selected; clover, sugar beet, wheat, barley, tomatoes and flax. These crops represent 97.5 % of crop cultivated area in El-Behaira governorate. The total available water in the winter season is 1.236 billion m 3 . The total crop area of the governorate is 592,771 Feddan (248,963 hectare). In the first un-restricted solution (URS1) all crops were assumed to be irrigated by the surface irrigation system. The optimum solution was to cultivate only three crops; barley, clover and wheat. The net return was L. E. 1.72 billion, 45.92 % of the income related to barely follow by clover 38.47% and wheat 15.61%.

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Wheat is the main cereal crop in Egypt. The gap between production and consumption is about 60%. Research efforts are needed to reduce this gap, therefore; the objective of this work was to study the effect of three water regimes as irrigation at 45%, 60% and 70% depletion of the available soil moisture, and three nitrogen fertilization levels on two wheat varieties (Giza 168 and Giza 171).The field experiments were carried out at Bahry El-Methaq region, Alexandria Governorate, Egypt during the two successive winter seasons of 2015/2016 and 2016/2017. The experimental design of the study followed split split plot design (SSPD) with three replicates, keeping two bread wheat cultivars {Giza 168 and Giza 171 } as the main plots, irrigation regimes (irrigation at 45%, 60% and 70% depletion of the available soil moisture) as subplot, and the three fertilization levels as 100%, 80% and 60% from recommended fertilizer rates of nitrogen fertilization common applied as sub-subplot. The results showed that seasonal ET0 was 665.9 mm for the first season and 624.8 for the second season.