Evaluation the existing drip irrigation network of Fadak Farm

Abstract

Drip irrigation is used where water resources are scarce and expensive or have salt problems. This system distributes water over a pipe network to the field and converts it by emitters from the pipe network to the plant. Many experiments were carried out in Fadak Farm that based in the Governorate of holy Karbala / Iraq. This study aims to assess the performance of the drip irrigation systems installed for the date palm. The head discharge relationships for emitters were expressed at different operating pressure, and the best model equipped with the highest R2 was calculated. Results from established models for the relationship of pressure discharge indicated that the pressure exponent was less than 0.5, which indicated that the type of dripper is compensated pressure. By measuring the discharge rates for emitters, the uniformity parameters, namely: absolute emission uniformity, field emission uniformity, coefficient of variation, application efficiency, design emission uniformity, statistical uniformity coefficient, emitter flow variation and pressure variation were determined. The obtained results for drip system indicate 96.5% for field emission uniformity, 96.25% for absolute emission uniformity, 95.9% for design emission uniformity, 97% for statistical uniformity coefficient, 6.85% for emitter flow variation, 0.026 for coefficient of variation, 96.5% for application efficiency, and 16.98% for pressure variation. In this study, the drip irrigation system was worked well efficiently over the entire study region. The performance of the drip system under study can be classified as excellent in accordance to the criteria used to assess the current drip irrigation system over the defined area of study and compared with the standards laid down.