Productivity and Water Use Efficiency of Summer Squash Crop under Two Methods of Irrigation Water Application

Abstract

EGYPT is currently seeking to implement a plan to rationalize water consumption in all sectors. As the agricultural sector consumes about 85% of Egypt’s water resources, therefore new irrigation application methods must be searched to rationalize water use by increasing the irrigation efficiency. Field experiment was conducted to compare two water application methods to calculate the requirements of water for squash (Cucurbita pepo, L. var. Hybrid Revera) during the summer season of 2019. Two methods of irrigation water application were used and adapted to conditions of drip irrigation system: (i) method A: using estimation of the reference evapotranspiration using the method of weather factors-dependent Penman-Monteith. (ii) method B is the water depletion from the soil, which depends on the water properties of soil. Crop water needs, yield, water use efficiency and the irrigation water amount lost by deep percolation were determined. The results showed that the irrigation method dependent on the soil water properties has positive effects on the squash production compared to method A. Moreover, the highest value of water use efficiency was obtained by method B, which was 5.31 kg m-3, while its value for method A was 4.33 kg m-3. Also, the highest yield was obtained by method B, which was 15970.10 kg ha-1, while the productivity under method A was 15492.69 kg ha-1. In addition, the highest values of lost water through deep percolation (14.82 %) were detected with method A. Generally, method of irrigation soil-based was more accurate in calculating the amount of irrigation water added and had clearly positive effects on growth, yield and water use efficiency of squash compared to a climate-dependent irrigation method.