A field study on hydraulic performance of drip irrigation system for optimization of operating pressure

Abstract

Drip irrigation technology will undoubtedly plays an important role in the future of the agriculture. A field experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of drip system with five operating pressure viz. I1 (0.4 kg/ cm2), I2 (0.6 kg/cm2), I3 (0.8 kg/cm2), I4 (1.0 kg/cm2), I5 (1.2 kg/cm2). It was observed that the average discharge of drippers was 1.08 lph, 1.24 lph, 1.50 lph, 1.62 lph and 1.74 lph and emission uniformity was 80.55%, 84.89%, 86.30%, 88.88% and 90.80 in each treatment respectively and coefficient of variation was observed 0.12, 0.13, 0.12, 0.11, and 0.09. Flow component was found 0.450 and the value of k was 0.572 while R2 was observed 0.986.Based on the result it can be concluded that the operation of drip irrigation system at 1.2 kg/cm2 pressure head, gives the maximum efficiency in respect of discharge, emission uniformity and coefficient of variation.