Abstract:
Water availability is becoming more of a limiting factor to agricultural development and crop
production. A field experiment was conducted to assess furrow irrigation systems and deficit
irrigation levels that provide maximum garlic bulb yield and water use efficiency under scarce
water resource conditions of the Tiyo district. The furrow irrigation systems that include, CFI,
AFI, and FFI in combination with irrigation levels that include 100%ETc, 85%ETc, 70%ETc, and
55%ETc formed twelve treatments and were laid out in RCBD with three replications. The result
revealed that plant height, leaf length and Garlic bulb diameter were significantly affected while
the number of leaves per plant, Bulb height, Bulb weight, Neck diameter, glove number, and glove
weight were not affected by the different levels of furrow irrigation systems and irrigation levels.
Bulb yield of garlic significantly (p<0.05) was affected by the furrow irrigation systems and
irrigation levels. Among the deficit irrigation, the highest total bulb yield of 82.68 q/ha was
obtained from the CFI85%ETc application and shows no significant difference with CFI70%ETc
and AFI100%ETc applications. Furrow irrigation systems and irrigation levels significantly
(p<0.05) affected both CWUE and IWUE. The highest IWUE was recorded from the AFI100%ETc
application and was not significantly different from all other deficit irrigation applications under
AFI and 70%ETc and 55%ETc applications under FFI. Nevertheless, considering the water saved
and the bulb yield that can be produced with extra water from AFI100%ETc, the CWUE, and
IWUE of 19.03 kg mm-1
and 28.64 kg mm-1
, respectively were found optimal. The yield response
factor revealed that AFI at 100%ETc and 85%ETc and 70%ETc applications are the least to be
affected as a result of deficit irrigation on the relative yield reduction. Hence, for maximum garlic
bulb yield and WUE under water-scarce area conditions, garlic needs to be irrigated under AFI
with deficit irrigation of 100%ETc applications.
