Use of pulse trickles to reduce clogging problems in trickle irrigation system in Saudi Arabia

Laboratory experiments were conducted at the Agricultural and Veterinary Training and Research Station, King Faisal University, Al-Hassa, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to study the effect of pulse irrigation from a line source on sandy soil uniformly packed in soil tank using high flow rates. It was found that the increase in pulsed flows up to six times to that of the equivalent continuous flow can be used with little change to the soil wetting pattern. The water deep percolation reduced and horizontal spread increased with an increase in the pulsed flow up to twelve times to that of continuous flow (control treatment). A strong correlation was obtained between the water application rates and the vertical and horizontal advances which could be expressed as power function. The results showed an excellent potential to increase the emitter sizes up to 2.4-3.5 times and the emitter cross section area up to 6.0-12.0 times than the normal size for reducing the trickle clogging problem. Empirical analysis of the vertical and horizontal advance shows that both of these parameters can be expressed as a power function.