Reducing of Water Use by Water Stress Regime on Some Main Field Crops (Wheat, Soybean and Corn )

Abstract

Being an arid country with rapid population growth and escalating living standard, Egypt is suffering from stresses on both water and land resources. It is obvious that agriculture is still considered the main economic activity as it consumes over 85% of the total water supply. Excessive usage of irrigation water has alerted sever problems and had caused harmful impact on soil and environment. Logging, fertility, and salinity are examples for the excess water hazard in lands. In this connection two field experiments were curried at Mallawy water Requirements research satiation -El Minia, of province, Middle Egypt, Water Management research institute -National water research center during the seasons of 2004 / 2005 and 2005 / 2006 to study the effect of water stress on water applied, water consumptive use, water use efficiency, water saving yield and economic evaluation for some major crops ( wheat, soybean and corn ).The experiment included three irrigation of depletion A1, A2, A3 are irrigated at 25 %, 50% and 75% depletion of available water, beside tradition irrigation in studied area (the farmer practices) to compare with water applied and water consumptive use. The experimental design was a randomized complete block, replicated three times.Results indicated that, from view point of water and economic the highest economic efficiency was obtained from irrigation with 50% depletion of available water for studied crops. Also results indicated that under the best irrigation treatments which 50% depletion of available water leads to an increase in yield about 16.3 %, 12.5% 10.9% and saving of irrigation water 16.1 %, 10.71% and 8.27 % for wheat, soybean and corn crops respectively. Hence, the obtained results indicate that it may be recommended to irrigate wheat, soybean and corn plants with depletion 50% of available water and irrigation frequency of with 18, 13 and 14 days respectively. In addition the applied water should reach the 90% of field capacity to produce high yield with least possible amount of water applied under El-Minia province conditions and other corresponding conditions.