M Noori
Department of Sugarcane Research Center, Karun-Agro Industry, Shushtar, Iran; mansourn2001@yahoo.com
Water resources limitation is a major challenge faced by farmers in Iran. To address this issue, sugarcane industries must find ways to increase irrigation water-use efficiency. Currently, sugarcane is irrigated using a furrow irrigation system through gated pipes. A study was conducted at Karun Agro, Industry to explore different strategies for improving water-use efficiency using several experiments. The results showed the importance of selecting sugarcane varieties with high water-use efficiency, implementing alternate furrow irrigation at different stages of sugarcane growth in heavy soils, changing the furrow shape in high infiltration rate soils, managing irrigation cut-off time and training the irrigation supervisors, and re-using of drainage water from subsurface drainage layout and mixing it with irrigation water. Different sugarcane varieties had varying levels of water-use efficiency, with the CP73-21 having the highest water-use efficiency (3.59 kgc/m3and 0.39 kgs/m3) in the plant crop. In the ratoon crop both CP69-1062 and CP73-21 had the highest (2.4 – 2.3 kgc/m3, and 0.25kgs/m3) at a 1% level, respectively. Additionally, using V- shaped furrows instead of shallow or deep U-shaped furrows improved water application efficiency and water-use efficiency by 80.5% and 0.87 kgc/m3, respectively. Implementing alternate furrow irrigation at all stages of growth resulted in 36.5% water saving compared to the conventional method. In another study, managing irrigation cut-off time resulted in a 25.0-26.7% water saving. Furthermore, by re-using from the sugarcane drainage water and mixing it with irrigation water, a yield of 90-100% of the sugarcane can be achieved. Overall, these strategies have proven to be effective in enhancing irrigation water productivity in Iranian sugarcane farms.