 | Managing salinity associated with irrigation at Orange-Riet and Vaalharts irrigation schemes |
| Expanded Title: | This project developed best practices and formulated guidelines for managing the salt load associated with irrigation at farm and scheme level. Monitoring of a range of management options in use by irrigators on the Orange-Riet and Vaalharts Irrigation Schemes over four cropping seasons provided insight into the mechanism of water and salt movement under a range of crops, soils and irrigation methods and also provided real world data for simulating the longer term response and implications of management strategies. It was inter alia found that the occasional heavier rainfall event would in most cases provide for sufficient leaching of accumulating salts even when no provision for leaching is made in irrigation applications. The best practice guidelines developed for implementation at field scale emphasise the necessity for efficient irrigation systems, the need for effective scheduling approaches, the need to monitor root-zone salinity, the need to select crops with salt tolerance adapted to the situation and the potential for on-farm utilisation of shallow water tables and the interception and re-use of drainage water. |
| Date Published: | 02/08/2012 |
| Document Type: | Research Report |
| Document Subjects: | Agricultural Water - Small holder irrigation |
| Document Keywords: | Governance, Policy and regulation |
| Document Format: | Report |
| Document File Type: | pdf |
| Research Report Type: | Standard |
| WRC Report No: | 1647/1/12 |
| ISBN No: | 978-1-4312-0301-7 |
| Authors: | Van Rensburg LD; Barnard JH; Bennie ATP; Sparrow JB; Du Preez CC |
| Project No: | K5/1647 |
| Originator: | WRC |
| Organizations: | Department of Soil, Crop and Climate Sciences University of the Free State |
| Document Size: | 8 683 KB |
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