Water Saving under Alternative Furrows Surface Irrigation in Clay Soils of North Nile Delta

Surface irrigation is the dominant method of on-farm irrigation in Egypt as well as world wide. Furrow watering is considered as one of the main types of surface irrigation. Most of the cultivated crops are grown under such type of watering. The principal advantage of furrow irrigation is the less irrigated area comparing with that under basin irrigation which equaled total cultivated acreage. Under the present situation of water shortage that facing Egypt resulted in capita share from water for different purposes becomes less than the water poverty edge and expected more decreasing to reach the scarcity level in the few coming decades. Moreover, Egypt is the solely country in the world that its agriculture is depending mainly on irrigation, i.e. irrigated agriculture due to the high arid condition of the country. For clay soils, the horizontal movement of irrigation water is exceeding the vertical downward movement. So, in this direction, a field trial in two seasons was conducted in North Nile Delta region to find out the impact of alternative surface irrigation on beet water relations. Comparing with the traditional furrow irrigation; fixed as well as exchangeable alternative surface irrigation effects on water saving, crop water productivity and on-farm irrigation efficiencies were analyzed.