Comparison of furrow and flood irrigation systems in 'Kinnow' mandarin under an Australian aid program

A. Raza, A.R. Khan, A. Rehman, A. Hayat, M.A. Zaka, T. Khurshid
A 'Kinnow' crop is grown in five growing regions of Punjab, Pakistan. A citrus crop management project is under way in Pakistan under the Australia aid program. As a part of the citrus Agriculture Sector Linkages Program (ASLP) project, an experiment was conducted in 2011 on a 25-year-old 'Kinnow' mandarin orchard at the Citrus Research Institute, Sargodha. The objective of the trial was to monitor the quantity of water used in furrow versus flood irrigation systems. The experiment also focused on yield and quality benefits of the furrow irrigation system. An orchard with an area of 0.41 ha (half for each system) was selected for this experiment. There were two treatments with three trees plot-1 replicated four times. Tensiometers were installed at 30, 60 and 90 cm soil depths to monitor the water levels in both furrow and flood systems. Irrigation was applied when tensiometer readings reached 40 kPa. Total quantity of irrigation water used was measured with a flume meter. The furrow irrigation system increased the yield by 18% in terms of number of fruit plant-1 (864), fruit yield by 20% (123 kg plant-1) and fruit size by 14% (71 mm) compared with the flood irrigation system, where number of fruit plant-1, yield (kg plant-1) and fruit size (mm) were 705, 98 and 61, respectively. The furrow irrigation system proved beneficial in terms of water savings (41%) as compared with flood irrigation, with the added benefit on yield and quality. This system needs to be further tested and adopted on a wider scale in commercial orchards in citrus growing regions of Punjab.
Raza, A., Khan, A.R., Rehman, A., Hayat, A., Zaka, M.A. and Khurshid, T. (2016). Comparison of furrow and flood irrigation systems in 'Kinnow' mandarin under an Australian aid program. Acta Hortic. 1128, 203-206
DOI: 10.17660/ActaHortic.2016.1128.31
https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2016.1128.31
citrus, yield, fruit quality, tensiometer, flume meter, water saving
English

Acta Horticulturae