Improving border irrigation performance with predesigned varied-discharge.

Area of Science:

• Agricultural Engineering
• Water Resource Management
• Irrigation Science

Background:

• Wheat production in the North China Plain is severely limited by insufficient water resources.
• Improving border irrigation performance and water use efficiency is crucial for sustainable agriculture in this region.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a predesigned varied-discharge irrigation scheme for closed-ended borders.
• To assess the irrigation performance, including application efficiency (AE), distribution uniformity (DU), and requirement efficiency (RE), of different discharge strategies.

Main Methods:

• Conducted field tests comparing continuous-discharge (CD), increased-discharge (ID), and decreased-discharge (DD) border irrigation.
• Utilized the WinSRFR hydraulic simulation model for scheme optimization.
• Performed sensitivity analyses on key hydraulic parameters like infiltration, roughness, slope, and inflow rate.

Main Results:

• The decreased-discharge (DD) border irrigation treatment demonstrated superior irrigation performance, achieving high average AE (91.4%), DU (95.5%), and RE (99.5%).
• DD treatment recorded the highest comprehensive evaluation indicator (Y) at 95.4%, significantly outperforming other treatments.
• The predesigned varied-discharge scheme, particularly DD, showed greater robustness compared to the increased-discharge (ID) scheme.

Conclusions:

• The predesigned varied-discharge border irrigation scheme effectively enhances overall irrigation performance.
• Decreased-discharge border irrigation is a highly effective and robust strategy for improving water use efficiency in water-limited environments.
• Optimized irrigation schemes are essential for addressing water scarcity challenges in agricultural production.