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Authors

Khaled Shalabi

Agricultural Research Engineering Institute-ARC-Giza, Egypt

Abstract

The presentation sheds the lights on the importance of theirrigation applications and irrigation management. Irrigation applications that could be configured by center pivot and its sprinkler packagesto match the different soil types, water quality and crops.Moreover, the irrigation management  technique  when irrigating crops by center pivot and arrange its irrigation schedule according to the readings of the weather station and soil moisture units.

The application research is conducted at Sakha Agricultural Research Station during the growing season of cotton 2010, the center pivot and its sprinkler package are configured to irrigate cotton crop and match low infiltration rate of heavy clay soil.

In order to achieve better irrigation management another research has been conducted at El-Menia region during the growing season of Sugar beet crop. The research aims to come up with the proper center pivot configuration that matches the sandy soil and Sugar beet crop, plus applying the irrigation management technique using weather station and soil moisture units.

Weather  station  is used  to measure  the climatic  conditions and  daily Evapotranspiration  (ETo)  whilst moisture  unit  is used  to measure  the volumetric water content, soil soluble salinity and water suction pressure. The  results  revealed  that  selecting  the  proper  center  pivot configuration with applying the irrigation management technique have increased the distribution uniformity and reduced the operating hours during  the  growing  from  4,000  hours  to  2,500  hours  compared  to previous season, which contributes positively in reducing the operating cost, and increase the net return on investment.

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