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Designing drip irrigation systems involve selection of an appropriate combination of emitter discharge rate and spacing between emitters for any given set of soil, crop, and climatic conditions, as well as understanding the wetted zone pattern around the emitter. The exact shape of the wetted volume and moisture distribution will depend on many factors, including soil hydraulic characteristics, initial conditions, emitter discharge rate, application frequency, root characteristics, evaporation, and transpiration. Multi-dimensional nature of water flow, plant uptake and high frequency of water application increase the complexity in modelling soil moisture dynamics from trickle irrigation. Researchers used analytical methods, semi-analytical methods and numerical methods to Richards’ equation using certain boundary conditions to model the infiltration from point source irrigation for use in design, install, and manage of drip irrigation systems due to their merits over direct measurements. Others developed models based on Green-Ampt equation, empirical models using regression techniques/dimensional analysis techniques/moment approach techniques/artificial neural networks on this topic to describe infiltration from a point/line sources. A review on these models developed under each category is presented in this study. Other knowledge gaps identified include (a) effect of variations in initial moisture content and packing conditions, (b) precision in observing the wetting front and soil–water content, (c) validity of soil surface boundary conditions, (d) effect of crop root architecture and its withdrawal pattern for different input parameters, (e) effects of gravitational gradients, (f) stratification in the soils, and (g) impact of soil hysteresis. The review promotes better understanding of the soil water dynamics under point source trickle emitters and helps to identify topics for more emphasis in future modelling activity.

Wetting pattern can be obtained by either direct measurement of soil wetting in field, which is site specific, or by simulation using some models. Use of numerical or analytical flow models for design purpose is considered cumbersome and impractical in many situations. Therefore, present study was undertaken to develop a model for wetting pattern under trickle source in sandy soil of Nirjuli, Arunachal Pradesh. In the present study, the drip irrigation system was operated to record observed wetting front advance (vertical and horizontal) of emitters with flow rates of 2, 4 and 10 l h−1. A fixed quantity of 4 l of water was applied to the bare dry soil kept in a container of perspex sheet (1 m × 1 m × 0.9 m). The wetting front advance was observed just after irrigation and its subsequent redistribution after 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 24 and 48 h respectively after irrigation. Using Buckingham π theorem, a semi-empirical model was developed to simulate the wetting front pattern under trickle point source at the end of irrigation. Performance of the model just after irrigation was evaluated by comparing estimated values against observed values using F test, t test, ME and RMSE values. The redistribution of the wetting front geometry with respect to elapsed time was modelled with regression analysis using four models viz. linear, logarithmic, exponential and power. Power function was found to be the best fit for horizontal wetting front (W) as well as vertical wetting front advance (Z) based on the highest R 2 value.

Standard evaluation procedures, based on field measurements and statistical, hydraulic models, have been developed for assessing irrigation systems performance. However, given the diverse nature of the irrigation methods, it is not possible to use a unique evaluation procedure. Ideally, variables would be measured at every point throughout the field under study, but that is clearly impractical. Instead, measurements are taken of selected samples, or irrigation models are used to predict field-wide distributions of the variables. In this paper, irrigation models for trickle, sprinkler and furrow irrigation are used to assess how well the irrigation performance indicators generated by standard procedures match those generated by whole-field simulations. Six performance indicators were used: distribution uniformity, uniformity coefficient of Christiansen, application efficiency, deep percolation ratio, tail water ratio and requirement efficiency. The analysis was applied to systems typical of cotton crops in Southern Spain. The results show that the procedure used to determine performance indicators in trickle irrigation provides good estimates of the whole field performance. The procedure used in sprinkler irrigation is also acceptable, but yields variable results. Finally, the standard procedure used for furrow irrigation produces biased, highly variable results and overestimates distribution uniformity.

For trickle irrigation systems to deliver improved water- and nutrient-use efficiency, distance between emitters and emitter flow rates must be matched to the soil's wetting characteristics and the amount and timing of water to be supplied to the crop. Broad soil texture ranges (e.g. sand, loam, clay) are usually the only information related to soil wetting used in trickle system designs. In this study, dimensions of wetted soil were calculated from hydraulic properties of 29 soils covering a wide range of textures and soil hydraulic properties to assess the impact of soil texture and/or type on soil wetting patterns. The soils came from two groups that differed in the extent to which hydraulic properties depended on soil texture. Vertical and radial distances to the wetting front from both surface and buried emitters were calculated for conditions commonly associated with daily irrigation applications in a widely spaced row crop (sugarcane) and horticultural crops. In the first group of soils, which had least expression of field structure, the wetted volume became more spherical (i.e. the wetted radius increased relative to the depth of wetting below the emitter) with increasing clay content, as is commonly accepted. However, in the second group of soils in which field structure was preserved, there was no such relationship between wetted dimensions and texture. For example, five soils with the same texture had as great a variation in wetting pattern, as did all 11 soils in the first group, indicating the considerable impact of field structure on wetting patterns. The implications of the results for system design and management were illustrated by comparing current recommendations for trickle irrigation systems in coastal northeastern Australia with the calculated wetted dimensions. The results suggest that (1) emitter spacings recommended for sugarcane are generally too large to allow complete wetting between emitters, and (2) the depth of wetting may be greater than the active root zone for both sugarcane and small crops in many soils, resulting in losses of water and chemicals below the root zone. We conclude that texture is an unreliable predictor of wetting and there is no basis for adopting different dripper spacing in soils of different textures in the absence of site-specific information on soil wetting. Such information is crucial for the design of efficient trickle irrigation systems.

The increased use of trickle or drip irrigation is seen as one way of helping to improve the sustainability of irrigation systems around the world. However, soil water and solute transport properties and soil profile characteristics are often not adequately incorporated in the design and management of trickle systems. In this paper, we describe results of a simulation study designed to highlight the impacts of soil properties on water and solute transport from buried trickle emitters. The analysis addresses the influence of soil hydraulic properties, soil layering, trickle discharge rate, irrigation frequency, and timing of nutrient application on wetting patterns and solute distribution. We show that (1) trickle irrigation can improve plant water availability in medium and low permeability fine-textured soils, providing that design and management are adapted to account for their soil hydraulic properties, (2) in highly permeable coarse-textured soils, water and nutrients move quickly downwards from the emitter, making it difficult to wet the near surface zone if emitters are buried too deep, and (3) changing the fertigation strategy for highly permeable coarse-textured soils to apply nutrients at the beginning of an irrigation cycle can maintain larger amounts of nutrient near to and above the emitter, thereby making them less susceptible to leaching losses. The results demonstrate the need to account for differences in soil hydraulic properties and solute transport when designing irrigation and fertigation management strategies. Failure to do this will result in inefficient systems and lost opportunities for reducing the negative environmental impacts of irrigation.

Orchard trials on the effect of salinity on fruit tree rootstock combinations typically call for leaving border trees between treatments, thus limiting the number of combinations that can be evaluated and making these experiments expensive and rare. Five salinity dilution ratios were applied to orchard trees through regular drip lines by different combinations of regulated in-line drippers. This enabled the construction of an orchard experiment without border trees, with the salinity increasing linearly along the orchard rows. Leaf analysis after application of salinity for approximately 150 days revealed significant correlations between the applied dilution ratio and the concentrations of Cl, Na and K in the scion leaves of some of the rootstock combinations.

Soil-water tension variability in a 0.15 hectare drip irrigated chile pepper field was evaluated in order to determine the number of tensiometers required for scheduling irrigations in such a field. Four plots were irrigated with a trickle irrigation system. Fifty tensiometers were installed in each plot and monitored on 13 days using a handheld pressure transducer (tensimeter). The standard deviations of the soil-water tensions were relatively high (30 cm at 50 cm tension) and increased when the soil became drier (180 cm at 400 cm tension). The variability of the log-transformed soil-water tension values did not increase as the soil became drier. Forty-eight out of 52 sets of soil water tension measurements were approximately log-normally distributed. Therefore, it appears that the log-transformed soil-water tension values should be used for statistical inference about the mean soil water status of the field. Temporal stability of the soil-water tension readings persisted for one irrigation interval. Using a previously determined production function (yield versus soil-water tension) it is shown for this field that about seven tensiometers are needed to determine the threshold tension value above which yields start to decrease.

This paper reports the results of a three-year field study conducted in El Salvador, Central America to develop yield response functions for corn to irrigation levels and nitrogen fertilizer. Four levels of irrigation were imposed using two application methods, furrow and trickle, in combination with four nitrogen fertilizer rates. Yields generally increased with higher levels of applied water and with higher nitrogen rates up to 200 kg N/ha, with a strong interaction between these two variables. Yield was independent of irrigation method although less water was applied with the trickle system.

Designing trickle irrigation systems involves the selection of a proper combination of trickle discharge rate, spacing between emitters, diameter and length of the lateral system for any given set of soil, crop and climatic conditions. Trickle irrigation is treated as transient and steady axisymmetric infiltration processes. An existing numerical solution to nonsteady state infiltration is used to quantify the effect of soil hydraulic properties and trickle discharge rates on emitter spacing (Fig. 2). The results of the analysis suggest the possibility of controlling the wetted volume of a soil by regulating the emitter discharge according to soil properties (Figs. 3 and 4). The surface distribution of a transformed soil water content (or pressure) function (Fig. 5) is derived from a linearized solution to steady infiltration. The analysis of steady and non-steady infiltration is employed to estimate the spacing between emitters as a function of discharge and water pressure conditions between emitters using hydraulic soil data (Fig. 6). Hydraulic conductivity parameters are given for 17 different soils (Table 1) to be used for design purposes. Theoretical analysis of soil water is combined with hydraulic principles to derive lateral diameter and length for engineering design requirements.