Using bism model to calculate water requirements for some vegetable crops in Egypt [electronic resource].

Includes references.

Agriculture water demand is one of the serious pressures on water sector in Egypt, since 85% of total available water is consumed in agriculture and most of the on-farm irrigation systems are low efficient coupled with poor irrigation management. The objective of this paper is to calculate water requirements for 12 vegetable crops grown in 17 Governorates in Egypt. These crops were cabbage, celery (winter and summer), spinach, potates (winter and summer), carrot (winter and summer), cucumber (winter and summer), pepper (winter and summer), strawberry, eggplant (winter and summer), tomato (winter and summer), sweet melon and artichoke. BISm model was used to calculate evapotranspiration, crop factor and crop evapotranspiration for each crop in each Governorate. The BISm application calculates ET using the Penrnan- Monteith equation, water requirement for each crop was calculated under surface irrigation with application efficiency 60%. The results showed that using BISm to calculate water requirements of some vegetable crops in Egypt were low values in the Nile Delta Governorates, in the other hand, its started to increase as. we go to south (Middle and Upper Egypt), these results could be useful for farmers, extension workers and large farms produce vegetables for export. Large applied amount of irrigation water to vegetables could negatively affect quality. Thus, it is very important to calculate water requirements for important crops, such as vegetable crops.

Summary in Arabic.

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