IRRIGATION WATER MANAGEMENT OF DATE PALM UNDER EL-BAHARIA OASIS CONDITIONS.

This experiment was carried out during two successive seasons of 2015/2016 and 2016/2017, at a private farm in El-Baharia Oasis area, Giza governorate, Egypt, to study the effect of irrigation systems: deep drip (DIS), micro jet (MIS), bubbler (BIS) and applied irrigation water levels (IR100,85,70%) under mulched (MS) and un-mulched (UMS) soil on marketable yield, crop quality parameters, actual evapotranspiration (ETa), water use efficacy (WUE), irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE), yield response factor (Ky) and actual crop coefficient (Kca) for date palm trees (Phoenix dactylifera). The experimental design was a split-split plot design with three replicates. The results showed that, the marketable yield and studied quality parameters except total soluble solid (TSS) of date palm fruits gave the highest values under DIS, IR=100% and MS treatment for both seasons. While, seasonal ETa gave the lowest values 564.41 and 526.78 mm for both seasons respectively, under DIS, IR=70% and MS treatment. Meanwhile, the maximum values of date palm fruits WUE and IWUE were (3.22 and 1.55 kg m-3); (3.61 and 1.62 kg m-3) for both seasons respectively, under DIS, IR=70% and MS treatment. Moreover, the minimum values of Ky for date palm fruits were 0.16 and 0.12 for both seasons respectively, under DIS, IR=85% and MS treatment. Finally, the minimum values of Kca for, I, D, M, L growth stages and the average seasonal were (0.29, 0.17, 0.28, 0.18 and 0.23); (0.29, 0.15, 0.25, 0.14 and 0.21) for both seasons respectively, under DIS, IR=70% and MS treatment. This study concluded that the cultivation of date palm trees under DIS, IR=70% and MS could be saved about 38% of applied irrigation water and increased marketable yield of date palm fruit about 20 and 22% for both seasons respectively, compared to that under control treatment (BIS, IR=100% and UMS).