Water Use Variability in Irrigated Wheat

Abstract

An understanding of the expected variability in irrigated crops under field size, surface irrigation conditions is needed to improve irrigation designs and water management scheduling procedures. The objective of this work is to describe water application uniformity under an efficient level -basin irrigation system and the variability of water use (soil water depletion) for three levels of irrigation and two basin lengths for a wheat crop. High water distribution uniformities with a level -basin irrigation system did not necessarily result in maximum irrigation application efficiencies where variations in soil -water factors were greater on a drier irrigation treatment than medium or wet treatment. Variations in soil water depletion were found for all irrigation treatments with the largest variation (13 %) occurring for the drier treatment. Spatial dependence was exhibited for soil water depletion but not necessarily for seasonal irrigation water applications.