Productivity of Some Summer Forage Crops Under Sprinkler Irrigation in Newly Reclaimed Soil Conditions.

Abstract

Two field experiments were carried out at Al-Hussein Society For Reclaiming And Cultivating land-64 km. Cairo Alexandria desert road, Giza Governorate. Egypt, during two successive summer seasons , 2006 and 2008, to study the effect of three irrigation rates (1500, 2000 and 2500 m³/ fad. per season) on yield and the water use efficiency expressed as kg dry yield/m³ of water consumed, of some sole and mixture summer forage crops, which were: sorghum (Sorghum bicolour ,L.), variety local hybrid 102, pearl millet (Pennisetum glacum) local variety Shandweel-1, cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L.) local variety buff and local population of Guar (Cyamopsis tetragonoloba L.). Three cuts were taken throughout the growth season at 60, 95 and 130 days after sowing. The crops grown as pure or mixed of two crops in different proportion (one line legume and two lines cereals or one line legume and one line cereal). The results revealed that, increasing the irrigating water quantum increased the yields in both seasons. The irrigation treatment 2500 m³/fad./season obtained the highest total fresh forage as well as the total crude protein yields /fad. The results cleared that, cereals crops as sole cropping out yielded the legumes and all mixed cropping combinations, and mixture treatments were more yield than legumes as sole crops. The combinations of 2/3 cereals + 1/3 legumes under irrigating treatment 2500 m³/fad./ season out yielded other combinations. Water use efficiency (WUE) values significantly increased by decreasing the irrigation water, in both seasons, the highest WUE obtained at the irrigation treatment 1500 m³/fad./ season with the pure stand of cereal, pearl millet was higher than sorghum, and cowpea was higher than guar in that character. The results revealed that, growing legume with cereal crops in mixtures at rate of 2/3 cereals + 1/3 legumes under irrigating treatment 2500 m³/fad./ season is important for improving the quality of cereal using sprinkler irrigation system at the experimental area.

Effect of Water Deficit at different Stages of Development on Forage Yield of Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L.) Genotypes

“…On the other hand, the herbage DMY for Cowpea-82d889 (8.4 t/ha) is comparable with a reported mean value of 8.76 t/ha reported for three improved cowpea cultivars grown in Southwest Nigeria. Rizk et al (2011) studied the productivity of some summer forage crops under three irrigation rates (1500, 2000 and 2500 m³/fad./ eason) using sprinkler irrigation system in newly reclaimed soil conditions; they found that, the irrigation water rates were significance effective on the total fresh and dry yields of cowpea in both seasons. Where, in the first season, the total fresh yield was; 12.51, 16.82 and 17.64 ton/fad; respectively, by average mean 15.66 ton/fad.…”