IRRIGATION MANAGEMENT OF PEPPER CROP UNDER SURFACE AND SUB-SURFACE DRIP IRRIGATION SYSTEMS BY USING EXPERT SYSTEM, IRRIMET AND CROPWAT

The scarcity of water in Egypt need for hard work to solve it. One of the best solutions is good management of limited water, therefore, this paper aims to provide farmers and decision-makers with a new accurate and cheap technique for water management. The experimental work was carried out in the farm of Faculty of Agriculture, Benha University (30⁰ 21/ 26.24// N and 31⁰ 13/ 15.89// E) during the summer seasons of 2016 and 2017. Three irrigation management tools (Expert system (ES), IRRIMET model (IM) and Cropwat model (CW)) were applied with surface and sub- surface drip irrigation systems. The results showed that the highest values of water saving were achieved by IM model followed by ES tool. Also, the estimated values of reference evapotranspiration (ETo), single crop factor (Kc) and crop evapotranspiration (ETC) under ES were very close to that obtained under IM model while under CW model the corresponding values were far from that under IM model especially the ETc values. Yield were achieved under subsurface drip irrigation system (SSDI). On the other hand, the IM model gave the highest values of pepper yield, water productivity (WP) and nutrient use efficiency (NUE) (6.86 ton h⁻¹, 1.59 kg m⁻³ and 21.17 kg kg⁻¹, respectively, with SSDI and 6.71 ton h⁻¹ , 1.64 kg m⁻ ³ and 20.75 kg kg⁻¹, respectively, with SDI), followed by ES (6.02 ton h⁻¹ , 1.3 kg m⁻³ and 17.28 kg kg⁻¹, respectively with SSDI and 4.31 ton h⁻¹ , 1.09 kg m⁻³ and 13.76 kg kg⁻¹, respectively with SDI. However, the differences between the values resulted from using ES and IM were not significant. The lowest values of pepper yield, WP and NUE were achieved with the management based on CW model outputs.