Alternate-furrow fertigation has shown potential to improve water and fertilizer application efficiency in irrigated areas. A combination of simulation and optimization approaches permits researchers to identify optimum design and management practices in furrow fertigation, resulting in optimum cost, irrigation performance, or environmental impact. The objective of this paper is to apply one-dimensional (1D) surface and two-dimensional (2D) subsurface simulation-optimization models to the minimization of nitrate losses in two types of alternate-furrow fertigation, as follows: (1) variable alternate-furrow irrigation, and (2) fixed alternate-furrow irrigation. For comparison purposes, optimizations are also reported for conventional furrow irrigation. The model uses numerical surface fertigation and soil-water models to simulate water flow and nitrate transport in the soil surface and subsurface, respectively. A genetic algorithm is used to solve the optimization problem. Four decision variables (i...

Simulation models have recently been used in many studies for simulation of water flow and solute transport in soil under different irrigation systems. The objective of this study was to compare the HYDRUS-1D and HYDRUS-2D simulation models to simulate water and nitrate transfer for three furrow irrigation technologies [conventional furrow irrigation (CFI), fixed alternate furrow irrigation (FFI), and variable alternate furrow irrigation (AFI)] under fertigation practice. Filed measured data were used to calibrate and validate the one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) HYDRUS models. An inverse solution technique was applied to optimize soil-hydraulic and solute transport parameters to calibrate the models. The results indicated that the HYDRUS-2D model provided better performance to predict soil water contents, nitrate concentrations, and deep percolation caused by the geometry of the infiltration domain in furrow irrigation. Standard errors for HYDRUS-1D ranged from 0.107 to 0.170 for soi...

Drought is one of the main serious problems for agriculture production which its intensity is increasing in many parts of the world, hence, improving water use efficiency is a main goal for sustainable agriculture. Growth indices including relative shoot length growth (SL), relative stem diameter increase (SD) and relative trunk cross sectional area growth (TCSA) measured at the start and end of the season decreased by reducing the irrigation level. Chlorophyll index (CI) was decreased at 70% crop evapotranspiration, however water use efficiency (WUE), leaf and fruit total phenolic content (TPC), and fruit anthocyanin content (AC) were among the traits that showed increment by water deficit stress in both cultivars. Shafi-Abadi cultivar showed to be more sensitive to the water stress than ‘Golab’. Kaolin treatment improved SL, SD and CI traits, but this increase was statistically significant only for SD at 5% level. Kaolin had no significant effect on yield and water use efficiency (WUE), however, it had negative effect on yield efficiency (YE). Kaolin treatments also significantly increased fruit and leaf TPC (P < 0.01) but had no effect on leaf and fruit total antioxidant activity (AA), as well as fruit anthocyanin content (AC) and soluble proteins (SP). Irrigation at 85% ETc showed better results than 100% and 70% ETc levels for yield attributes. It seems that the more pronounced effect of kaolin on vegetative traits but not on the fruits, might be attributed to the early ripening and harvest time of the examined cultivars.