PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF FURROW IRRIGATION IN BELLES SUGAR DEVELOPMENT PROJECT SUGARCANE FARM LEVEL, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Evaluation of farm irrigation system plays a fundamental role in improving surface irrigation and in providing information used to advice irrigators how to improve their system operation. Furrow irrigation is one of the common methods of applying water to sugarcane at Belles sugar development project Sugarcane Plantation. The plantation is facing problems with respect to irrigation water management. This study was initiated with the objectives of evaluating the performance of furrow irrigation system at a farm level. To evaluate the performance of furrow irrigation system, a soil laboratory and field measurements (field layout, furrow geometry, time of cutoff, discharge) are made. The soil infiltration parameters „a‟, „k‟ and „fo‟ for each irrigation event are determined based on a two point approximation to volume balance method that incorporated modified Kostiakove Lewis infiltration function. Statically comparison of models outcome found the Win SRFR simulated model values provides good fitter than the SIRMOD simulation values to the estimated values. The analyses of the performance of the furrow irrigation in terms of application efficiency (Ea), distribution efficiency (Du), storage efficiency tail water Ratio (TWR), and Deep Percolation (DP) were done and found to be, the average application efficiency 62.1%, 65.3% and 68.5% for SIRMOD, estimated and WinSRFR simulated values; distribution efficiency 90.4%, 92.4% and 95.5% for estimated, SIRMOD and WinSRFR simulated value; storage efficiency 24.1%, 26.4% and 32.8% for SIRMOD, WinSRFR simulated and estimated values; TWR 31.2%, 34.2% and 37.9% for WinSRFR, estimated and SIRMOD simulated values, respectively and deep percolation ratio for all estimation is null. From the sensitivity analysis furrow slopes are higher sensitive than other parameters on influencing the application efficiency. The effects of furrow lengths are highly influencing on TWR. The effect of discharge influence on the storage efficiency also high with compared to others whereas the time of cutoff found affect the distribution efficiency.