Engineering Interventions in Sustainable Trickle Irrigation: Irrigation Requirements and Uniformity, Fertigation, and Crop Performance

Improving agricultural water use efficiency (WUE) is vitally important in many parts of the world due to the decreasing availability of water resources and the increasing competition for water between different users. Micro irrigation is an effective tool for conserving water resources. Studies have revealed a significant water savings, ranging from 40% to 70% under drip irrigation compared with surface irrigation. This new volume, Engineering Interventions in Sustainable Trickle Irrigation: Irrigation Requirements and Uniformity, Fertigation, and Crop Performance, presents valuable research that evaluates crop water and fertigation requirements, examines optimum irrigation and fertigation scheduling, and analyzes the performance of agricultural crops under micro irrigation.

With an interdisciplinary perspective, this volume addresses the urgent need to explore and investigates the current shortcomings and challenges of water resources engineering, especially in micro irrigation engineering. The volume discusses crop water requirements, fertigation technology, and performance of agricultural crops under best management practices. The chapter authors present research studies on drip irrigated tomato, chilies, cucumber, eggplant, cabbage, garlic, sugarcane maize, cashew nut, sapota, banana, mango, and blueberries.

Removing the research gap, this volume provides new information that will be valuable to those involved in micro irrigation engineering.

Megh R. Goyal, PhD, PE, is a Retired Professor in Agricultural and Biomedical Engineering from the General Engineering Department in the College of Engineering at University of Puerto Rico–Mayaguez Campus; and Senior Acquisitions Editor and Senior Technical Editor-in-Chief in Agriculture and Biomedical Engineering for Apple Academic Press Inc. He has worked as a Soil Conservation Inspector and as a Research Assistant at Haryana Agricultural University and Ohio State University. He was the first agricultural engineer to receive the professional license in Agricultural Engineering in 1986 from the College of Engineers and Surveyors of Puerto Rico. On September 16, 2005, he was proclaimed as "Father of Irrigation Engineering in Puerto Rico for the twentieth century" by the ASABE, Puerto Rico Section, for his pioneering work on micro irrigation, evapotranspiration, agroclimatology, and soil and water engineering. During his professional career of 45 years, he has received many prestigious awards. A prolific author and editor, he has written more than 200 journal articles and textbooks and has edited over 25 books.

Basamma K Aladakatti is a Research Scholar presently pursuing her PhD in the Department of Soil and Water Engineering from the College of Technology and Engineering, Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology (MPUAT), Udaipur, India. She completed her BTech and MTech degrees from University of Agricultural Sciences, Raichur, and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India, respectively. She is an awardee of the INSPIRE fellowship from the Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India. for her PhD and received a Junior Research Fellowship award from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi. She has published several full-length research papers in national and international journals as well as more than 20 abstracts and four full-length papers in various symposiums and conferences on various significant topics of agriculture engineering. She has received two best paper awards. Her career pursuits include working on research projects pertaining to refinement of micro irrigation and drought analysis and forecasting.