Abstract

GONZALEZ ROBAINA, Felicita; HERRERA PUEBLA, Julián; LOPEZ SEIJAS, Teresa  and  CID LAZO, Greco. Irrigation water productivity of some agricultural crops in Cuba. Rev Cie Téc Agr [online]. 2014, vol.23, n.4, pp.21-27. ISSN 2071-0054.

It is required of methods to evaluate water productivity for the best economic and social use of it, in order to make better decisions as for political and strategies of use in a sustainable way. Water irrigation user need to identify tendencies in the use patterns and levels of efficiency with a view to state goals and to improve the productivity for unit of used volume and/or consumed. The objective of this paper was to present the indicators of water productivity of 17 crops starting from the information obtained in more than 100 field experiments available in the database on water requirements of the Research Institute on Agricultural Engineering (IAgric). The maximum and minimum yields and their respective values of consumption, irrigation water applied and the irrigation water productivity for these crops were determined. Cultivations like the beans, corn, sweet potato and bananas obtain superior yield increments to 100% when the required water is applied to satisfy its water requirement, while cassava obtained values smaller than 50%. The high values obtained of productivity based on the irrigation water applied are not a good indicator of the efficient use of the water for the plants for the conditions of the study area, where they are informed for the analyzed years, percentages of profitable rain of until 41%, replacing this an important part of the needs of the agricultural crops.

Keywords : yield; irrigation; water efficiency.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )