MICRO IRRIGATION PRACTICES IN TOMATO - Management, Performance, and Applications of Micro Irrigation Systems - page 195

TABLE 7 (Continued)

Treatments Yield, t/ha Water requirement,

cm

Water-use-efficiency,
t/ha/cm

T 7 15.0 22.7 0.661

T 8 12.8 27.6 0.464

SE (m) 0.448 0.439 0.253

CD (0.05) 1.304 1.312 0.453

Incorporation of mulch in some treatments reveals that it has signifi cant effect on
reducing the crop water requirement. The mean water requirement of treatment T1
was 25.9 cm and when we used mulch the same treatment (now it is designated as
treatment T5) gave water requirement of 24.6 cm (Table 7). Thus there is a reduction
of 5.01% water requirement because of mulching. Similarly, the mean water require-
ment of furrow method of irrigation without mulch (Treatment T4) is 29.7 cm but it is
reduced by 7.07% for mulching. The reason that mulching reduces water requirement
may be due to the fact that evaporation from the crop root zone is reduced because of
LDPE cover in the soil and thereby reducing the crop evapotranspiration. This causes
less amount of water to be applied to the crop, consequently decreasing the water
requirement. Thus, the study reveals that irrigation scheduling, methods of irrigation
as well as mulching has signifi cant effect on water requirement of the crops and thus,
play great role in saving of irrigation water. From the study, it is suggested that the
crop should be irrigated with drip methods rather than furrow and inclusion of mulch
will save a lot of costly irrigation water.

15.4.3 WATER USE EFFICIENCY
Yield, water requirement and water-use-efficiency (WUE) of the crop for 2006 and
2007 are presented in Tables 5 and 6, respectively. The mean values of the above men-
tioned parameters are presented in Table 7. The data in Tables 5 to 7 indicate that the
values of WUE of the crop are highest for treatment T5 with values of 0.780 t/ha/cm
and 0.768 t/ha/cm in 2006 and 2007, respectively, with a mean value of 0.763 t/ha/cm.
This value of WUE in treatment T4 is computed to be the lowest with value of 0.410 t/
ha/cm in 2006 and 0.430 t/ha/cm in 2007 with a mean value of 0.418 t/ha/cm (Table 7).
Thus there is 82.5% more WUE of the crop in treatment T5 as compared to treatment
T4. The furrow treatments resulted in reduced WUE than the drip irrigated treatments.
The reason may be due to low yield of the crop in furrow treatments with high water
requirement. The drip treatments gave higher yield and at the same time required less
water, and therefore the value of WUE was less. Among the different irrigation sched-
uling methods used in drip treatments, treatment T1 gave mean WUE value of 0.656
t/ha/cm whereas T2 and T3 gave 0.625 and 0.582 t/ha/cm, respectively. Treatment T1
resulted in obtaining 5.0% more WUE than T2 and 12.71% more in treatment T3. The
reason of getting more WUE for treatment T1 may be due to the fact that in treatment