Analysis of Furrow Irrigation Design Parameters on Sugarcane Growth and Yield Parameters Under Wonji Shoa Climatic Condition

Abstract

Sugarcane is one of the important industrial crops produced all over the tropical areas. Sugarcane production is highly expanding in developing countries like Ethiopia. However, sugarcane is characterized by very high crop requirements. But sugarcane is produced mostly in Ethiopia using furrow irrigation methods in which more losses of irrigation water is most common due to many factors. Even if there are high losses of water in furrow irrigation, in which its performance influenced by many factors, to improve its performance or reduces the losses of irrigation water proper furrow irrigation decision variables combination is very important. In line with this the current study focused on three main furrow irrigation design parameters.  The main purpose of the current study was to analyse effect of furrow irrigation design on sugarcane growth and yield parameters under Wonji Shoa Sugar Estate conditions. The field experiment was conducted using Split-split plot design with three factorial experiments replicated three times. All required data on growth and yield of sugarcane parameters were collected and analysed using SAS 9.4 version statistical software.  The effect of furrow slope showed statistically significance variation at 5% significance on growth parameters (cane height, cane weight, cane diameter and number of cane internode per stalk), but non significance variation on yield components of sugarcane (moisture percent, dry substance, number of millable cane stalk and sugarcane yield).  But the effect of furrow length showed statistically significance variation on almost all growth and yield parameters of sugarcane at 5% significance level except sugarcane yield. Finally, the effect of furrow discharge rate on all growth and yield parameters considered were showed statistically significance variation at 5% significance level except number of millable cane stalk. In general, the highest sugarcane yield was obtained from furrow slope three, furrow length three and furrow discharge rate as compared to the other factors level. Therefore, this result it can be recommended that slightly slope, longer furrow length and less properly applied discharge rate resulted in more yield of sugarcane.