Crop Water Productivity Optimization for Rice Cultivation Under Drip Irrigation System

Abstract

Recently, micro irrigation technology has started to be applied in irrigation of field crops in some of old lands of Egypt. Rice (Oryza sativa, L.) is the most important crop for Egyptian food security in spite of its traditional methods of irrigation which needs large quantities of water to flood paddy field during different growth stages. Therefore, to optimize crop water productivity, this work aims to assess the effect of some drip irrigation parameters on yield and crop water productivity of drip irrigated paddy rice under clay soil conditions. Field experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of drip irrigation emitters discharge treatments (2, 4 and 8 lh -1 ) and emitters spacing treatments (30 and 50 cm), on soil moisture and salt distribution, plant growth parameters, yield and its components and crop water productivity of drought-resistant rice varieties (Oraby3). The obtained results indicated that, the highest values of grain yield of paddy (12.54 ton.ha -1 ) and crop water productivity (1.66 kg grain.m -3 of water) were obtained from same treatment (D 4-30 ) of 4 lh -1 emitters discharge at 30 cm spacing between emitters on lateral lines, while highest rice straw yield (16.06 and 16.73 ton.ha -1 ) was obtained from both (D 8-30 ) and (D 8-50 ),which is means that this high straw yield comes from the treatments of higher discharge 8 lh -1 at both 30 and 50 cm spacing. So, introducing appropriate drip irrigation system to irrigate rice crop in old land can save water and maximize crop yield and crop water productivity.