Water management and utilization is an ongoing problem in developing countries with semi-arid to arid climates such as Afghanistan. The lack of effective irrigation systems are oftentimes the most limiting factor for maximizing agricultural productivity in these countries. In Afghanistan, the most widely used irrigation methods are basin/border for cereal crops and furrow for vegetables and gra...

Irrigation management can have a profound influence on olive oil production. We initiated a 2-year study in the spring of 2002 to identify the optimal level of applied water on a super high tree-density (spacing 1.5 m 3.9 m) olive (Olea europaea L.‘Arbequina I-18’) orchard. Irrigation water was applied by drip irrigation to produce different water-application treatments of 15, 25, 40, 57, 71, 8...

Sustainability evaluation of the process of water abstraction, distribution, and use for irrigation can contribute to the policy of decision making in irrigation development. Emergy theory and method are used to evaluate a pumping irrigation district in China. A corresponding framework for its emergy evaluation is proposed. Its emergy evaluation shows that water is the major component of inputs...

PURPOSE To investigate the contamination of the dental irrigation systems with Cryptosporidium species in Alexandria, Egypt. METHODS Forty water samples from all 20 working dental irrigation machines in a dental center in Alexandria were included in the study. Water samples were taken from the handpieces of dental irrigation machines in all studied units. After filtration through a membrane f...

Rising demand for food, fiber, and biofuels drives expanding irrigation withdrawals from surface water and groundwater. Irrigation efficiency and water savings have become watchwords in response to climate-induced hydrological variability, increasing freshwater demand for other uses including ecosystem water needs, and low economic productivity of irrigation compared to most other uses. We iden...

Capillary rise from shallow groundwater can decrease the need for irrigation water. However, simple techniques do not exist to quantify the contribution of capillary flux to crop water use. In this study we develop the Agricultural Water Productivity Model for Shallow Groundwater (AWPM-SG) for calculating capillary fluxes from shallow groundwater using readily available data. The model combines...

Results of a field study carried out at Trinitapoli (Puglia region, southern Italy) on the irrigation of an artichoke crop with three types of water (secondary-treated wastewater, SW; tertiary-treated wastewater, TW; and freshwater, FW) are reported. Physical, chemical and microbiological analyses were performed on the irrigation water, and on soil and yield samples. The levels of most of the c...

A fuzzy control irrigation system for cotton field is presented in this paper. The system is composed of host computer, slave computer controller, communication module, soil water sensors, valve controllers, and system software. A fuzzy control model is constructed to control the irrigation time and irrigation quantity for cotton filed. According to the water-required rules of different cotton ...

Crop production is a process of multiple inputs (water and nutrients, etc.), and the relationships between the inputs and crop yield are very complex. This study used a model for data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate the efficiency of irrigation-fertilization schemes for winter wheat in North China. The field experiments were conducted at the Xiaohe Irrigation Experiment Station in Centra...