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The locally manufactured small-scale agricultural machinery in Egypt has recently acquired high importance in order to localize technology and innovation at the farm level. This study aims to design a cost-effective multi-seed planting raisedbed machine to rationalize water use and enhance land productivity in the Nile Delta of Egypt. The small farmers will adopt this technique to enable water, energy, seeds, and effort saving. The design of the machine went through a systematic process of tests to ensure that the design fit for purpose considering a set of design criteria such as soil type, crop type, and varieties as well as seeds size, planting rates, roads networks, farm sizes, cost-effectiveness, and available existing traction forces. The analyses using SolidWorks, a solid modelling computer-aided design and engineering application program, and Ansys simulation software were carried out to the loads and stresses subjected to different parts of the machine in order to identify the proper thickness and materials to manufacture the machine. Based on the stress and strain analysis, the machine structure and its components were designed. The main components of the machine include the main skeleton, seed drill box, planter seed box, feeding chambers, and cells as well as a feeding tube, gearbox, ditchers, ground-driving wheel and transmission mechanism, and mounting triangle. After building the machine components, various investigations were performed by subjecting the used materials to ascending loads to analyze shearing force, normal stress, shear stress, strain, and strength analysis in a micro meshes scale in all machine components. These tests enabled the identification of deformations, equivalent elastic strain, and Safety factor on different machine parts. The simulated values of the machine's parts in thicknesses and dimensions were in good correspondence and consistency with the actual design values. The model showed that the boundary conditions were accurate and rational, and it would provide a scientific basis for the optimum design of the raisedbed machine under multiple and interlinked loads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The water footprint (WF), based on irrigation water quality, is important as a decision-making tool for crop selection based on the comparative advantage of water consumption and yield to maximize agricultural water productivity and sustainably improve water use efficiency. This paper presents a generic link between climate variability and water footprint. To support this link, a case study is presented for wheat and maize in different agro-climate zones in Egypt. In this study, the three agro-ecological zones, Nile Delta, Middle Egypt, and Upper Egypt, were selected to represent three different microclimates. The climate data were analyzed to estimate reference evapotranspiration (ETo) and calculate crop water use (CWU) for wheat and maize from 2015 through 2019. Cultivated area and yield data were analyzed during the study period. Water footprint (WF) was calculated for old land (clay soils) and new lands (sandy soils) in three climate regions based on blue and grey water. Green water was excluded due to negligible rainfall depths in Egypt. The results showed that the mean values of WF for maize were 1067, 1395, 1655 m3/ton in old land and 1395, 1634, 2232 m3/ton in new land under the three climate regions, respectively, while it was 923, 982, 1117 m3/ton in old land and 1180, 1258, 1452 m3/ton for wheat in new land for the three regions, respectively. The results show that the crop water use fluctuated over regions due to climate variability where the CWU values were 6211, 7335, 8007 m3/ha for maize and 4348, 4825, 5774 m3/ha for wheat in the three regions, respectively. The results show an 11% and 33% increase in maize and an 18% and 29% increase in wheat CWU in Middle and Upper Egypt regions comparing to what was observed in Nile Delta due to an increase in solar radiation, temperature, and wind speed. The Egypt mean value of wheat water footprint was 1152 m3/ton and mean value of maize water footprint was 1563 m3/ton. The data clearly show the effect of microclimate variability on WF and irrigation requirements between regions. The methodology and results from this study provide a pathway to help the policy makers to mitigate climate change impacts on crop yield and to enhance water resources management in major crop production regions by redistribution of the cropping patterns based on the comparative advantages of each crop within each region. The crop choices relative to the soil water retention characteristics could also contribute to the moderation of microclimate, which affects ETo and ETc and the water footprint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a significant consumer of irrigation water and precipitation on cropland. Global and regional interest in the sustainable management of limited freshwater supplies to meet the rapidly increasing population and food demands has resulted in advanced scientific research on ET measurement, rapid water accounting, and irrigation schedules in the NENA region. The primary goal of this paper is to compare actual daily evapotranspiration (ET) collected by a remote sensing model and validated by Energy Balance (EB) flux tower field measurements. The flux tower was installed in a wheat field in Sids Agricultural Research Station in Beni Suef Governorate. Through the integration of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Terra and Sentinel-2 data, a new remote sensing-based ET model is built on two parties: Thermal condition factor (TCF) and vegetation condition fraction (VCF). The remote sensing-based ET estimation model was evaluated using ET field measurements from the Energy Balance flux tower. The land use and land cover maps were created to assist the interpretation of remotely sensed ET data. Field data for five categories were collected to test the accuracy of the land use and cover maps: Water bodies (93 points), urban areas (252 points), trees (104 points), other field crops (227 points), and wheat (249 points), for a total of 925 ground points. The Google Earth Engine (GEE) imported sentinel-2 datasets and filtered the necessary dates and regions. From 1 October 2020 to 30 May 2021, sentinel-2 data were processed and transformed into the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), and Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI), which were then combined. The composite layer data were classified using the Random Forest (RF) method on the GEE platform, and the results showed an overall accuracy of 91 percent. The validation factors revealed good indices when RS-based ET results were compared to ground-measured ET. The Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) was 0.84 mm/day. The 'r' and 'd' values indicated satisfactory results, where 'r' yielded a value of 0.785, which indicates that the correlation between predicted and reference results is robust. The analysis of d values revealed a high degree of correlation between predicted (RS-based ET) and reference results (measured ET). The d value was found to be 0.872. Between 21 November 2020 and 30 April 2021, RS-based accumulated ET was 418 mm/season, while ground-measured ET was 376 mm/season. The new RS-based ET model produced acceptable daily and seasonal results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raised beds (RB) are hailed as means to mitigate the problem of excessive irrigation. However, their adoption and impacts in Egypt are not well-documented. This paper is based on survey data collected from a sample of 691 wheat fields drawn from three major wheat-producing provinces of Egypt. Using area-weights for upward aggregation, we estimated that 19.3% of total wheat area in the three provinces is cultivated with raised beds. We applied the endogenous switching regression model to analyze the socioeconomic, biophysical, and environmental impacts of RB. Model results showed that the adoption of RB led to a 937 kg/ha (12.79%) increase in yield, a US$77.60/ha (9.47%) increase in gross margins, an 824.63 m3/ha (15.05%) reduction in irrigation water application, 16.7% reduction in seeding rate, 5.56% increase in water productivity, and an 11.80% reduction in downside yield risk. Adoption of RB didn't have significant effect on soil salinity and quantities of fertilizer and labor inputs. These results show that RB can provide panacea to several interrelated socioeconomic, biophysical, and environmental problems associated with irrigation. The policy implication of our findings is that Egypt and other similar countries can benefit from embracing RB as part of the technology packages promoted by their national agricultural extension systems. The benefits to these countries will increase if they invest more on research for adapting and perfecting the RB technology including its mechanization and its efficacy in soil salinity management. • The use of raised beds (RB) is expanding in Egypt which is now at 19%. • Adopters of raised beds are reaping sizeable gains in yields and gross margins. • Raised beds are good technology options for reducing irrigation water. • RB increase yield stability and reduce the probability of below-average yields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rice is a crop that is usually grown under flooded conditions and can require large amounts of water. The objective of this 3-year study was to quantify water use in water- (WS) and dry-seeded (DS) systems. In WS systems, the field is continuously flooded, while in DS systems the field is flush irrigated for the first month and then flooded. Research was conducted on commercial rice fields where the residual of the energy balance method using a sonic anemometer and the eddy covariance method were used to determine crop evapotranspiration (ET) and crop coefficient ( K) values. In addition, inlet irrigation water and tailwater drainage were determined. Across years, there was no difference in ET (averaged 862 mm), seasonal K (averaged 1.07), irrigation water delivery (averaged 1839 mm) and calculated percolation and seepage losses (averaged 269 mm) between systems. An analysis of the first month of the season, when the water management between these two practices was different, indicated that K and water use were lower in DS systems relative to WS systems when there was only one irrigation flush during this period, while two or three irrigation flushes resulted in similar values between the two systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]