Enhancing Water Use Efficiency and Yield of Pomegranate Crop by Using Fish Drainage Water with Bio-Fertilizer under Drip Irrigation System

M. A. M. Moursy, Amro Negm (), H. G. Ghanem and Kamal I. Wasfy
Additional contact information
M. A. M. Moursy: Water Management Research Institute, National Water Research Center, El-Qanater El-Khairiya 13621, Egypt
Amro Negm: Department of Agricultural and Environmental-Sciences Production, Landscape, Agroenergy, University of Milan, 20133 Milan, Italy
H. G. Ghanem: Water and Irrigation System Engineering Department, Faculty of Agriculture Engineering, Al-Azhar University, Nasr City 4450113, Egypt
Kamal I. Wasfy: Agricultural Engineering Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Zagazig University, Zagazig 44519, Egypt

Agriculture, 2022, vol. 12, issue 9, 1-15

Abstract: Fish drainage water is a non-conventional water resource that can be exploited for irrigation due to its constituents of beneficial nutrients, signifying it as environment-friendly bio-fertilizers. Limited water resources, the elevated cost of mineral fertilizers hazards as well as attaining healthy food are of paramount significance in the agriculture sector in Egypt. The utilization of bio-fertilizers is an avenue to fulfil agricultural sustainability, production of clean crops and preservation of the soil from the accumulation of heavy metals and chemicals. Hence, this study aims to find non-conventional alternative water resources to be used for irrigation of pomegranate fruit yield. Two resources of water were utilized, and three types of bio-fertilizers were applied. Results showed that, fish drainage water increased the total yield (kg/fed) by 25.2% as compared to freshwater. Chicken manure increased the total yield (kg/fed) by 22.37 and 11.89% in comparison with cattle and compost organic fertilizer under fish drainage water, respectively. The use of chicken manure yielded the highest net return (2420.79US $/fed), while compost and cattle dung were found to be (2123.52US $/fed) and (1721.66US $/fed), respectively, under using fish drainage water. The study showed that the use of fish drainage water as an organic resource would be an alternative to commercial fertilizers, which could reduce the total cost and thus increase the net profit and yield. Less dependency of commercial fertilizer would have an impact on reducing the emissions of CO 2 mitigating global warming.

Keywords: water resource; chicken manure; cattle dung; compost; fruit quality; fruit yield; net return (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: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/12/9/1376/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/12/9/1376/ (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:12:y:2022:i:9:p:1376-:d:905377

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 ().