Beet Cut-off Irrigation as Efficient Way in Water Saving

Under surface irrigation, particularly in clay soils cut-off technique is considered as one of the most practical way in saving irrigation water that traditional farmers could be easily implemented. Such farming way is processing through find out the optimum length of irrigation run at which watering should be stopped instead of irrigation till the tail end of the furrows or borders. Such procedure resulting in reducing amounts of water pathways and the advancement movement of the accumulated water after stopping irrigation used in watering the remaining un-irrigated area. Therefore, a field experiment was conducted during the two successive growing seasons 2002 and 2003 to find out the role of cut-off procedure on beet saving irrigation water and water use efficiencies. Three irrigation run treatments were tested; 100% (A), 90% (B) and 80% (C) from furrow length. Main findings can be summarized as follows: Seasonal water applied for sugar beet in north Nile delta is ranged between 2979 to 2558 m (71-61 cm) for treatments A the traditional without cut-off and C with 80% cut-off depending upon rainfall and length of irrigation run. Seasonal sugar beet cropwater consumption (ETc) was 52.7, 48.5 and 47.0 cm for treatments A, B and C respectively. Daily Etc for the stated treatments were 2.7, 2.5 and 2.4 mm. Mean percentage values of consumptive use efficiency which reflects the beneficiary water consumed by the growing plants from the applied water were 74.4, 76.0 and 77.2% for the corresponding treatments respectively. Irrigation till 90% furrow length resulted in the following pronounced advantages: 1. Highest yield for both root and sugar with corresponding values of 28.7 and 4.8 ton/fed or 68.8 and 11.5 ton/ha (1ha=2.38fed). 2. Highest field water use or so-called water utilization efficiency (W.UT.E) as well as water use efficiency (W.U.E) for both root and sugar beet yield. The corresponding values were 10.8 and 1.8 kg/m Thirteenth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC13 2009, Hurghada, Egypt 3. Saving irrigation water amounted with about 300 m/fed or 24 mil m for Kafr El-Sheikh Governorate. In other words saving water at the national beet cultivated area of about 240,000 feddan is 72 mil m.