The increasing demand of water in the country highlights the need to introduce low-input and water saving technologies for agricultural sustainability and crop production, mainly in semi-arid region. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of plastic mulch at field scale on improving the performance of surface irrigation in contrast to conventional practices. Therefore, a field experiment was conducted to test the combined effect of furrow irrigation lengths and furrow plastic mulching on crop growth, yield and water productivity of squash. The experiment was laid out with furrow irrigation method and plastic mulch with different furrows lengths (15, 30 and 40 m). Two experimental furrow plots were prepared, the first was mulched furrows (MF) and the second was non-mulched furrows (NMF). The results indicated that the amount of applied water was less in MF by 10% than that in NMF treatments. It may be due to the higher soil moisture content (26.6%) before irrigation than NMF (22.7%) as a direct effect of mulching. The highest yield of squash crop was obtained from MF treatment with 30m furrow length (10.7 t/fed) followed by 15 m furrow length (10.5 t/fed) under MF too. Regarding the different irrigation practices with plastic mulch, maximum irrigation water productivity (5.11 to 5.41 kg/m3) was obtained in the mulched furrow irrigated squash with plastic mulch. The water saving was thus 10.44% under MF treatments when compared to non-mulched furrows irrigation method NMF. |
