JWSS - Journal of Water and Soil Science

In order to investigate the effect of water quantity in subsurface drip irrigation on water use efficiency of palm yield and yield components, and determining suitable irrigation treatments for three different date cultivars, a split plot experiment design in a randomized complete block design with three replications were applied for three cropping years (2013-2016), at Behbahan Agricultural Research Station. The applied irrigation water in three levels based on 75, 100 and 125 percent of water requirement in the main plots and three cultivars of Kabkab, Khasi and Zahidi dates were compared in sub plots. The irrigation level of 75% with 0.646 kg of dates per 1 cubic meter of water in terms of water use efficiency as compared to the other two levels of irrigation showed a significant superiority. The Khasi cultivar with 83.9 pips and 29.2929 fruits in the cluster ranked first. The irrigation level of 125% with 11.1% were higher in fruit moisture, and 100% and 75% irrigation levels with 9.6% and 7.8% moisture content were the next. The irrigation level of 125% for Kabkab cultivar with a volume of 11.1 cubic centimeters were ranked first. Optimizing water use and reducing it to 10606 cubic meters per hectare in irrigation level of 75% water treatment will save water consumption. If the basis for comparing the amount of water used in 100% water treatment is considered, then the use of subtropical drip irrigation reduces water consumption by 2509.6 and 5019.2 cubic meters per hectare, respectively, compared to 100 and 125% water requirements.

Increasing crop production per unit volume of water consumption requires recognizing the most dependent variable in drip irrigation to the volume of water consumption and also identifying the most important variables independent of water productivity in surface and subsurface drip irrigation for optimal use of available water resources. The present research was carried out in Behbahan Agricultural Research Station during four cropping seasons (2013-2017) on a Kabkab date variety. Experimental treatments include the amount of water in the subsurface drip irrigation method based on two levels of 75% and 100% water requirement and in surface drip irrigation based on 100% water demand. Data were analyzed using a randomized complete block design with three replications. The results of the analysis of variance of the mean of different irrigation treatments in quantitative traits showed that the effect of irrigation was significant at the level of 1% in terms of cluster weight index, fruit weight, and fruit flesh to kernel weight ratio. The results of regression analysis of variance showed that in the dependent variable of cluster weight, the consumption water volume explained 19.1% (R2 = 0.191) of the fluctuations of the dependent variable (cluster weight). Among all the studied variables, the volume of water consumption explained the most significant changes in date cluster drying. Fruit moisture with t (2.096) and equivalent beta coefficient (0.046) had a significant positive effect on water productivity at the level of 5%. The results of the Pearson correlation coefficient showed that the effect of yield on changes in water productivity was much greater than the volume of water consumed so the yield caused significant changes in water productivity. While the effect of water consumption on water productivity was not significant.