Response of Spring Wheat ( Triticum aestivum ) to Deficit Irrigation Management under the Semi-Arid Environment of Egypt: Field and Modeling Study

Samiha Ouda, Tahany Noreldin, Juan José Alarcón, Ragab Ragab, Gianluca Caruso, Agnieszka Sekara and Magdi T. Abdelhamid
Additional contact information
Samiha Ouda: Agricultural Research Center, Water Requirements and Field Irrigation Research Department, Soils, Water and Environment Research Institute, Giza 12619, Egypt
Tahany Noreldin: Agricultural Research Center, Water Requirements and Field Irrigation Research Department, Soils, Water and Environment Research Institute, Giza 12619, Egypt
Juan José Alarcón: Irrigation Department, CEBAS-CSIC, Campus Universitario de Espinardo, 30100 Murcia, Spain
Ragab Ragab: UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UK CEH), Wallingford, Oxfordshire OX10 8BB, UK
Gianluca Caruso: Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, 80055 Portici (Naples), Italy
Agnieszka Sekara: Department of Horticulture, Faculty of Biotechnology and Horticulture, University of Agriculture, 31-120 Krakow, Poland
Magdi T. Abdelhamid: Botany Department, National Research Centre, 33 EL Bohouth St., Dokki, Giza 12622, Egypt

Agriculture, 2021, vol. 11, issue 2, 1-13

Abstract: In many areas of the world, water shortages prevail and threaten food production. Deficit irrigation was commonly investigated in dry areas as a precious and sustainable production approach. Using the CropSyst model to simulate the effects of different deficit irrigation treatments could help draw conclusions and save time, effort, and money. Therefore, the aims of this research were (i) to calibrate and validate the CropSyst model for wheat under different sustained and phenological stage-based deficit irrigation treatments, (ii) to simulate the impacts of the latter treatments on limiting wheat yield reduction. Two field experiments were conducted in Nubaria (Egypt), representing an arid environment. They included seven irrigation treatments: (1) 100%, (2) 75%, or (3) 50% of crop evapotranspiration (ETc) during the whole crop cycle; (4) 50% ETc at tillering only, or (5) at booting only, or (6) at grain filling only, or (7) at both tillering and grain filling, with the replenishment of 100% ETc to the treatments (4) to (7) in the remaining phenological stages. The results revealed that phenological stage-based deficit irrigation of wheat resulted in lower yield reduction compared to sustained deficit irrigation treatments, with a 6% yield reduction when 50% ETc was applied at the booting stage. Wheat yield loss was reduced to 4 or 6% when 95 or 90% of ETc were applied, respectively. The CropSyst model accurately simulated wheat grain and total dry matter under deficit irrigation with low RMSE value. In conclusion, the CropSyst model can be reliably used for evaluating the strategy of planned deficit irrigation management in terms of wheat production under the arid environment.

Keywords: CropSyst model; deficit irrigation; arid environment; wheat irrigation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/2/90/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/2/90/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:11:y:2021:i:2:p:90-:d:484212

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().