Assessing the impacts of supplemental drip irrigation and organic mulching on upland rice cultivation for efficient water management in Uganda.

Abstract

Soil and water management with changing climate is one of the major challenges being faced by small-scale upland rice farmers in Uganda. Upland rice cultivation is relied on rainfall using traditional irrigation approaches such basin irrigation. The variation of rainfall amount and distribution causes moisture deficient and especially with bare soils. This is the most important limiting factors affecting the productivity of upland rice since bare soil, experiences high evaporation thus high loss of moisture. This renders plants to water stress whenever sudden change in rain fall take place. The use of grass mulch and supplemental drip irrigation is climate smart approaches that can contribute to solving the above challenges. To assess this, the research experiment was carried for 6 months from May/2021 to Nov/2021 on area of 96 m2 under open field conditions with drip irrigation. This experiment was under completely randomized design with six treatments and two replications. Six treatments consisted of three irrigation applications of 100%ETc, 80ETc and 60ETc each under mulch and no mulch conditions was considered with two replications of each. Nerica 4 rice variety was used as a test crop in the research with organic mulching Different agronomic practices such as timely weeding was carried out. The results show that crop growth and yields was high in all treatments with organic mulches. In addition, most of the root concentration was found to be in shallow soil profile of 020 cm and widely distributed. This shows that roots follow the redistribution of soil moisture in the profile layers. The high yield was observed under 80% irrigation water requirement than all other Etc. values. In general, all treatments with mulch conditions had high yield as compared to the irrigation with no mulch conditions. Therefore, evidence that organic mulches which are eco-friendly and conserve moisture in soil that improve on crop growth, reduce on crop water stress in event of little rainfall and contributing to better final yield.