CROPWAT – Assessment of Irrigation Strategies in the Region of Skopje

Abstract

CROPWAT is a decision support system developed by the Land andWater Development Division of FAO. Its main functions are to calculatereference evapotranspiration, crop water requirements and crop irrigationrequirements. The program allows choosing the cultivation site, culture, thecropping time, soil type and establishment of irrigation strategy.The ETo, irrigation schedule, the quantity of used water, the reductionof the yield according to the growth stage are calculated from the existing datain CLIMWAT-database. The region of Skopje was chosen for analysis ofdifferent irrigation strategies applied to tomato culture cultivated in an openfield from 15th of May to 3rd of October. Three irrigation strategies wereanalyzed: without irrigation (rainfed), sprinkle irrigation when irrigation covers100% of the field area, drip irrigation with 60% effectively wetted of total fieldarea, irrigation covers 60% of field area, drip irrigation when the deficit isequal to 130% readily available water and definition of own irrigation strategywith drip irrigation system with 60% field coverage and irrigation applicationwhen a specific soil moisture depletion of 22 mm occurs and the applicationdepth is 70% of readily available water.