Use of Crop Water Stress Index to Improve Irrigation Scheduling for Wheat Crop in Koga Irrigation Scheme, Ethiopia

Water status detection by thermal imaging is a non-invasive and rapid assessment method; it provides great potential to improve irrigation planning. This research evaluates the use of crop water stress index to improve irrigation scheduling for the wheat crop. Besides, the effects of different irrigation scheduling on the yield, canopy temperature, crop water stress index (CWSI), and irrigation water productivity of wheat crop were investigated. An infrared thermometry handheld thermal camera was used to detect the temperature of wheat canopies under three different irrigation treatments: wetting front detector (WFD), Chameleon, and current practices by farmers as control. The result indicated that there were no significant differences (p>0.05) in the effect of irrigation treatment on the CWSI during the different crop phonological stages. This shows that irrespective of the irrigation scheduling method, the CWSI could be determined. The maximum Irrigation Water Productivity (IWP) of the two blocks was from the WFD field which was 0.72kg/m3, 0.64 kg/m3 for Adibera and Chihona block respectively which was significant (p<0.05) at both blocks within control farmer however there was no significant difference between the two technology (WFD and Chameleon).From the result both irrigation treatment irrigates when the CWSI reaches with rang of 0.4 to 0.6, this suggests that the wheat in Koga irrigation scheme should be irrigated when the CWSI reaches a value of 0.4 up to 0.6. Abyssinia Journal of Engineering and Computing, Vol. 1 No. 2 (2021)