Knolewdge acquired: project cycle, water delivery and irrigation practices at field scale in rural tropical environment.
Competence acquired: design, assembling and check criteria of irrigation aqueducts, pressurized and surface irrigation systems, irrigation management, water and energy saving techniques.
Skills: design and management of pressurized and surface irrigation systems, practice of irrigation under conditions of limited water supply.
Allen R.G., Pereira L.S., Raes D., Smith M.: Crop evapotranspiration-guidelines for computing crop water requirements, FAO Irrigation and drainage paper n.56, Roma, 1998.
ARC-Agricultural Research Council, Standards and Guidelines for improved efficiency of irrigation water use from dam wall release to root zone application, Water Research Commission Report no. TT466/10, ISBN 978-1-4312-0023-8, pp. 34-37, 2010.
Ghinassi G.: Manual for performance evaluation of sprinkler and drip irrigation systems, ICID publication No. 94, New Delhi, 2008.
Sne M.: Micro Irrigation in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions - Guidelines for Planning and Design, ICID publication, ISBN : 81-89610-09-0, New Delhi, 2006.
Teaching aids supplied by the teacher
Learning Objectives
The course is organized in a way to match two main issues: lectures aiming to provide the student with the knowledge needed for irrigation practice at both farm and field scale in a tropical rural context, classroom training with numerical applications on the topics and field practical works.
At the end of the course, the student will be familiar with the principles of hydraulics and their areas of application, with soil hydrology, the hydrological balance and the methods for calculating evapotranspiration in average tropical rural context. He will be able to approach the system design and sizing, select irrigation equipment most suitable for the specific context, check the performance of both pressurized and surface irrigation systems, manage irrigation on both seasonal basis and single application, use techniques for water and energy saving.
The skills acquired will allow the student to put the acquired knowledge into practice. In particular, to enter the rural context with an approach capable of involving the largest number of stakeholders in the irrigation project, from the policy maker to the smallholder farmer.
Prerequisites
Students are expected to be familiar with the principles of mathematics and physics.
Teaching Methods
CFU: 6
Total hours of the course (including the time spent in attending lectures, seminars, practice): 48
Contact hours for lectures: 22
Contact hours for laboratory-field/practice: 18
Seminar (hours): 8
Further information
Attendance is recommended. Exercises consist of numerical and practical applications on the topics.
Type of Assessment
Verification of learning consists of a written test and an interview on the topics discussed through the course, during lectures and exercises.
The written test is carried out at the end of the course and consists of 30-40 multiple choice questions with 3 options, and two exercises on system (delivery, irrigation) sizing and irrigation management.
The interview consists in discussion of both the test result and the topics dealt with during the course.
Other evaluation criteria are the following:
use of terminology appropriate to the course content; knowledge degree of the topics discussed;
capacity to link the different topics covered by the course program; ability to solve problems related to the course issues.
Course program
Basic concepts of hydraulics: fluid statics, fluid dynamics, flow in pipe, open channel flow.
Bernoulli principle; Darcy law for head losses estimate; Chezy formula for assessing flow velocity in open channel.
Pressurized flow: design of aqueducts by gravity and with mechanical lifting; characteristics of centrifugal pumps.
Mention to irrigation principles: soil hydrology; infiltration rate; cumulative infiltration; crop evapotranspiration and calculation methods with special attention to those suitable for tropical rural environment; irrigation parameters.
The water budget.
Design criteria for pressurized irrigation systems. Pump selection and power assessment.
Sprinkler irrigation. Choice of sprinklers. Arrangement of pipelines on the field. Sprinkler grids. Choice of pipe diameters.
Micro irrigation. Characteristics of the driplines. Types of emitter. Self-compensating and non-self-compensating emitters. Low cost drip irrigation for smallholder farmers.
Surface irrigation. Intake opportunity times. Kostiakov formula. Improved techniques: Surge Flow, Cablegation, gated pipe.
Distribution uniformity indices: Christiansen coefficient of uniformity (CUC), Distribution uniformity of the Lower Quarter (DUlq).
Efficiencies.
Performance evaluation of pressurized and gravity irrigation systems. Benchmarking.
System design and irrigation management criteria to save water and energy. The principles of deficit irrigation.