Irrigation & Drainage Systems Engineering

Ethiopia has expanded irrigable areas by constructing many small-scale irrigation schemes. These are aimed to improve the productivity of agricultural crops. However, they commonly perform far below the intended objectives. This is mostly because the performance of the irrigation schemes has not been managed well. In the present study, the water delivery performance and the satisfaction of irrigation users for Robit small-scale irrigation scheme were evaluated. The water delivery performance indicators; adequacy, efficiency, equity, and dependability were evaluated by monitoring discharge at nine selected tertiary offtakes for three months during 2017. The irrigation water flow was measured using Current meter and 3-inch Parshall flume. Questionnaire was developed to assess the satisfaction level of irrigation users regarding the irrigation service received. Finally, the collected data were analyzed using STATA, CROPWAT, ARC GIS, and Microsoft Excel. The adequacy, efficiency, equity, and dependability values varied widely regarding location (from head to tail end of the scheme) as well over time (from April to June). Thus, when compared with Molden and Gates standards, the scheme was performing under a “fair” condition with adequacy and dependability and under “good” condition regarding efficiency and equity. The level of irrigation users' satisfaction with the irrigation service received was 57.33%, 48%, 42.67% and 49.33% at the head, middle, tail reaches, and the entire system respectively. Satisfaction of irrigation users was associated with the variation in the general availability of water, availability over time and farm location respective to the head canal.

Wheat is considered as the chief cereal crop of Pakistan. Most of the farmers in Jaffarabad use flooding irrigation system for wheat crop which causes waterlogging and salinity in the area. Therefore, this research work was conducted at Village Bilawal Khan Jamali, union council Samoo, District Jaffarabad, Balochistan, Pakistan. Aim of this research work is to determine water saving and optimum crop yield by comparison of flooding and raised bed irrigation systems. In Flooding and Raised bed Irrigation Systems, Management Drawn Depletion (MDD) level was used. Study results revealed that the net irrigation (I) was applied 320 mm for flooding irrigation system, for raised bed irrigation system, 277 mm of net irrigation was calculated and 50 mm rainfall occurred in the fields. The yield production of flooding and raised bed irrigation systems were calculated 1368 kg/acre and 1656 kg/acre respectively. The yield of raised bed irrigation system was calculated 17.2% greater than flooding irrigation system. According to these results, the maximum yields have been obtained and waterlogging and salinity were controlled from raised bed irrigation with efficient usage of water.

Ghana has implemented a lot of programmes and projects in the agricultural sector over the years that seek to reduce poverty enhance food security and also to improve farmers output as well as their productivity. Block farming is one of these projects that provided credit to farmers in term of inputs supply in a form of improved varieties of seeds, fertilizers and technical assistance in order for farmers to earn an appreciable returns and pay for the inputs after the crop season.
As a result of these the research seeks to assess the impact of block farming on livelihood of farmers in two beneficiary areas, the Kwahu West Municipality and Kwahu South District in the Eastern Region of Ghana. A simple random sampling technique was used to collect the data of block farmers and was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Findings revealed that most of the block farmers were in their active age, mainly of males and depend solely on farming for their livelihood. Almost all of the block farmers are motivated to go into block farming to earn a living and get readily available market for their produce. The block farming programme have had a moderately positive and significant impact on livelihood of farmers in Kwahu West Municipality and Kwahu South District in terms of farmers’ output, profit making, improvement in standard of living and revenue gain from sales of produce.

The study was conducted at Wondo Genet Agricultural Research Center, SNNP Region, Ethiopia, 7°05’ N latitude, 38°37’ E longitude and 1785 m.a.s.l for three years (2015/16 to 2017/18) based on the objective to determine the level of deficit irrigation levels and furrow irrigation water application techniques on yield and water productivity of lemongrass (Cympopogon citratus (DC) Stapf). Three types of furrow irrigation techniques (alternate, fixed and conventional furrow) combined with different irrigation levels (100, 75 and 50% ETC) with three replications were
used in randomized complete block design. Different furrow irrigation application methods and irrigation levels highly significantly (p<0.01) affected fresh biomass, dry biomass and water use efficiency of lemongrass during 2015/16 and 2017/18. Moreover, essential oil yield of lemongrass was significantly (p<0.05) affected due to different furrow irrigation application methods and irrigation levels both during 2015/16 and 2017/18. However, no significant (p ≥ 0.05) variation was observed in number of tillers per hill and essential oil content of lemongrass due to different furrow irrigation methods and deficit levels during 2015/16 and 2017/18. Higher fresh biomass (9610, 7348 and 4458 kg/ha) and dry
biomass (2507, 2136 and 1408 kg/ha) were obtained at 100% ETC under conventional furrow method during the three successive years. Similarly, maximum essential oil yield of 62.5 and 40.1 kg/ha was obtained at conventional furrow irrigation method with 75 and 100% ETC during 2015/16 and 2017/18, respectively. On the other hand, minimum fresh biomass (7123, 4689 and 2296 kg/ha) and dry biomass (1903, 1308, 704 kg/ha) during the three successive year, and essential oil yield of 44.9 and 20.0 kg/ha were obtained at fixed furrow with 50% ETC during 2015/16 and
2017/2018, respectively. In addition to these, higher water productivity of 0.080, 0.075 and 0.052 kg/m3 was obtained due to alternate furrow irrigation with 50% ETC during three successive years. On the other hand, the minimum water productivity of 0.024, 0.026 and 0.021 kg/m3 was obtained at conventional furrow technique with 100% ETC during 2015/16, 2016/17 and 2017/18, respectively. Therefore, for maximizing essential oil yield under no water limiting scenario, lemongrass could be irrigated with conventional furrow irrigation methods with 100% ETC. However, under limited water resource condition, the main objective will be to maximize the water use efficiency without significantly reducing the oil yield. Therefore, in this case lemongrass could be irrigated with alternate furrow technique with 100% ETC at Wondo Genet and similar agro-ecology and soil type.

Water quality monitoring has one of the highest priorities in surface water protection policy. Many techniques and methods focus in analyzing the concealing parameters that determine the variance of observed water quality of various source points. A considerable proportion of them mainly depend on statistical methods, multivariate statistical techniques in particular.
In the present study, the use of multivariate techniques is required to reduce the large variables number of Nile River water quality upstream Cairo Drinking Water Plants (CDWPs) and determination of relationships among them for easy and robust evaluation. By means of multivariate statistics of principal components analysis (PCA), Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) and K-means algorithm for clustering analysis, this study attempted to determine the major dominant factors responsible for the variations of Nile River water quality upstream Cairo Drinking Water Plants (CDWPs).
Furthermore, cluster analysis classified 21 sampling stations into three clusters based on similarities of water quality features.
The result of PCA shows that 6 principal components contain the key variables and account for 75.82% of total variance of the study area surface water quality and the dominant water quality parameters were: Conductivity, Iron, Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), Total Coliform (TC), Ammonia (NH3), and pH.
However, the results from both of FCM clustering and K-means algorithm, based on the dominant parameters concentrations, determined 3 cluster groups and produced cluster centers (prototypes). Based on clustering classification, a noted water quality deteriorating as the cluster number increased from one to three, thus the cluster grouping can be used to identify the physical, chemical and biological processes creating the variations in the water quality parameters.

Use low-quality water has become part of Egypt water strategies to meet its demands especially in the agricultural sector. This study investigates the irrigation water (mixed freshwater with agricultural drainage water), drainage water, soil drainage, salinity and groundwater for Gelbana region (2500 hectare new reclaimed area since 2000) at the East South El-Qantara, North Sinai, Egypt. The findings indicated that irrigation water quality was slightly saline. The drainage water and groundwater were medium saline. Soil was a poorly medium dense sand, have an electrical conductivity (EC) varying from 1 to 4 dS/m, and the vertical drainage was low efficiency. for sustainable cultivation it is recommended that (1) applying subsurface drainage system to improve washing of soil salts (2) changing the cropping system at the scheme to meet soil salinity levels (3) periodic monitoring for the irrigation water, drainage water, soil salinity, and the groundwater are important issue to manage crop pattern and drainage water.