Assessing the performance of different irrigation techniques to enhance the water use efficiency and yield of maize under deficit water supply

摘要

Owing to increasing water scarcity, irrigation techniques always play an important role to boost-up agricultural production by enhancing the efficiency of irrigation water use. Field experiments were conducted to evaluate different irrigation techniques for evapotranspiration, water use efficiency and maize yield under deficit irrigation . Spring and Summer sown maize were the test crops, cultivated during the year 2011. Four irrigation techniques, i.e. furrow irrigated ridge, furrow irrigated raised bed, furrow irrigated raised bed with plastic mulch and sprinkler irrigated flat sowing technique, were used with 100, 80 and 60% field capacity (FC) level. Results indicated that furrow irrigated raised bed treatment in both growing seasons showed maximum harvest index (HI), grain and biological yield in case of 100% FC, while furrow irrigated ridge with 10 0% FC gave the highest evapotranspiration, LAI (leaf area index) and crop cover, but did not produce the highest grain yield and gave relatively low water use efficiency (WUE) and irrigation water use efficiency WUE i . Sprinkler irrigated flat treatment produced highest WUE and WUE i values. Irrigation requirement of corn simulated by the IManSys model showed strong correlation between measured and estimated values, with r 2 values of 0.99 and 0.99 in spring season, 0.95 and 0.99 in summer sown maize, respectively.