Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ecological Engineering journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecoleng Drip irrigation management for wheat under clay soil in arid conditions Harby Mostafa ⁎ , Reham El-Nady, Montaser Awad, Mohamed El-Ansary Agric. And Biosys. Eng. Dept., Faculty of Agric., Benha Univ., 13736 Moshtohor, Toukh, Qalyobia, Egypt ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Drip irrigation Water productivity Wheat irrigation ABSTRACT Uneven water distribution, misuse of water and inefficient watering techniques are some of the major causes playing devastation with water security, therefore, the aim of this work was to explore managing drip irrigation of wheat grown under heavy soil conditions as a tool for increasing crop yield, enlarging water productivity and saving irrigation water for newly reclaimed areas. A field investigation was conducted to study the impact of drip irrigation lateral arrangements (single and double lateral line a bed) and irrigation intervals (4-, 8-, and 12-days) on yield and water efficiency of wheat. Results revealed the grain yield was marginally influenced by irrigation intervals under double and single line a bed. As well, the grain yield got at 8- and 12-day intervals with double lateral line (8.28 and 7.62 Mg.ha -1 , respectively), were higher compared with 4-day and the less grain yield was achieved by surface irrigation (control). Distributing water and salts were better under double lines a bed compared to single line under the same irrigation intervals. The highest value of water use efficiency of grain yield was 7.4 at 8-day followed by 6.62, 5.50 and 1.58 kgm -3 for 12-, 4-day and surface irrigation, respectively performed for double lines a bed with water saving 6.7% and 65% compared to 12-day and surface irrigation respectively. 1. Introduction Egypt faces a challenging on decreasing water availability and the area of arable land mentioned for wheat production (Boutros 2013). Most small farmers (those with the land property of one ha or less) cultivate their soil (including straw) for consumption purposes, selling the excess for income generation (RISE 2014). Small farmers are re- presented by the 70% of Egypt’s poor living in rural areas (IFAD, 2012). Otherwise, field application efficiency in most traditional irrigation methods is still low and often as low as 30% (Molden 2007). Excessive application of water entails losses because of surface run-off and deep percolation below the root zone within the area and both of them dif- ficult to control under the surface irrigation, where a large volume of water is applied at a single instance. According to FAO (2012), the area of cultivated wheat in Egypt is 1.34 million hectares and the yield that comes out of it is 6.6 Mg.ha -1 , resulting in a total wheat production of around 8.8 million tons and domestic consumption was 19 million tons. In 2010, according to the FAO, Egypt imported 10.6 million tons of wheat as well as the use of the domestic production (Boutros 2013). Bashour and Nimah (2004) revealed that trickle irrigation saves around 50 percent of the water used as a part of surface water. Aujla et al. (2007) revealed a saving of 25 percent water on trickle irrigation as contrasted furrow irrigation. Ibragimov et al. (2007) analyzed trickle and furrow irrigation, acquiring that 18–42% of the irrigation water was saved with drip systems and the water use efficiency (WUE) ex- panded by 35–103% contrasted with furrow irrigation. The shape and the total volume of the wet soil beneath a diaper change with hydraulic parameters of the soil, number of drippers, re- lease rate and irrigation frequency. It needs to be settled so the crops could be provided with a satisfactory wet soil volume to meet their water needs (Kao and Hunt 1996; Al-Qinna and Abu-Awwad, 2001). Particularly in drip irrigation, distributing salts that dissolved in the soil profile follows the shape of the water flux with the tendency to aggregation at the fringe of the wet soil volume, and the salt collection is much greater near the surface than at the deeper layers and increases with distance from the emitters (Wang et al., 2011). The aim of this work was to examine the issue of irrigation treat- ments (single and double drip lateral lines a bed) and irrigation inter- vals on soil moisture and salt distribution patterns, vegetative growth, yield and WUE of wheat (Triticum aestivum (vulgar)). 2. Materials and methods 2.1. Site description To achieve the objectives of this study, two years field experiment was conducted in a private land at Village Damalo, Banha, Kalyobia http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2017.09.003 Received 4 June 2017; Received in revised form 5 August 2017; Accepted 6 September 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: harby.mostafa@fagr.bu.edu.eg, harby_sorour@yahoo.com (H. Mostafa). Ecological Engineering xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0925-8574/ © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: MOSTAFA, H., Ecological Engineering (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2017.09.003