The agricultural region in the western bank of Lake Nasser is one of the new promising agricultural settlements, which has the advantage of early-season production of several high quality cash crops. The agriculture production in this region is fully-irrigated, and constrained by sever environmental, biophysical and socio- economical conditions. Moreover, farmers have been facing several additional challenges in irrigation management due to lack of knowledge of the best practices.
The aim of this study is to evaluate the current farmers' irrigation schemes in terms of water productivity. The study examined some possible irrigation schemes in order to improve water productivity with minimum irrigation requirement and to cope with projected water shortage and temperature increase induced by climate change. The study is based on modeling approach utilizing the FAO crop model “AquaCrop" on drip irrigated tomato. It was performed (i) to calibrate AquaCrop via two field trials at two seasons, (ii) to observe and evaluate the current farmers' irrigation schemes based on fixed application frequency, and (iii) to evaluate six irrigation schemes under current and future climate conditions. The evaluated schemes included different combinations between net irrigation application and deficit practices at two levels of 80% and 60% of net water requirements, under current and future climate conditions, based on the change in irrigation application and water productivity. The results demonstrated that the combination of deficit irrigation levels and irrigation scheduling could improve tomato water productivity to the optimal level determined under the current study conditions (2.4 kg/m3), especially when deficit levels of 80 and 60% applied at both early and late stages of crop growth stages. These schemes could present acceptable adaptation options with the projected temperature increase due to climate change.