Comparison of corn yield irrigated with different qualities of water Gideon Orona,b,c, Leonid Gillermana, Nisan Buriakovskya, Ludmilla Katza, Yossi Manord, Josef Haginc, Adi Ravehe and Amos Bickf,g,* a) Environment Water Resources, The Institute for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of The Negev Kiryat Sde-Boker 84990, Israel. E-mail:
[email protected], b) Ben-Gurion University of The Negev, The Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel. c) The Grand Water Research Institute, Technion Haifa 32000, Israel d) Central Virological Laboratory, Sheba Medical Centre, Tel-Hashomer 52621, Israel e) Department of Business Administration The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel f
Dept. Industrial Engineering and Management, Jerusalem College of Technology, Jerusalem, Israel, E-mail:
[email protected] g Dept. Chemical Engineering/ Environmental section, Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Ramat-Gan, Israel.
*corresponding author
Abstract. Field experiments are in progress for secondary wastewater upgrading for unrestricted utilization for irrigation and sustainable agricultural production. The integrative treatment system for the secondary effluent polishing is based on using in series two main stages: UltraFiltration (UF) and Reverse Osmosis (RO) membrane. The UF effluent is used to feed the RO membranes. Different mixtures of UF and RO permeates are subsequently applied for drip irrigation of various crops. Irrigation with RO effluent with added fertilizer provides the best plant development and eventually the best yield. Keywords: Effluent; Hybrid membrane systems; multivariate analysis technique; Renovation; Unrestricted Reuse. Introduction The possibility of using several secondary effluent qualities combined with Onsurface Drip Irrigation (ODI) technology for crops irrigation was examined in a cornfield experiment (Oron et al., 2008). The following treatments, all purposely under ODI are: (i) irrigation with Secondary Effluent from the Ponds (SEP); (ii) irrigation with Secondary Effluent from the Reservoir (SER); (iii) irrigation with UF effluent; (iv) irrigation with RO effluent; (v) irrigation with a mixture of 70 % UF effluent and 30 % RO effluent (0.7UF+0.3RO), and; (vi) irrigation with a mixture of 30 % UF effluent and 70 % RO effluent (0.3UF+0.7RO).
The irrigation system Each treatment consists of 4 replications (four plots) namely, a total of 24 plots. The soil texture in the experimental fields consist is of about 28.8% clay, 45.2% silt and 26% sand. The field experiment consists of 6 treatments with six different
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effluent qualities. Each treatment consists of four plots, allowing a thorough statistical analysis. Each plot is 12 m by 16 m and the total experimental area is around.0.46 ha. Corn (corn for grains #3223) was seeded (8 seeds per 1m run per each row). The plants were arranged in rows on of 0.93 m wide beds.
Results One of the main objectives of the research was to examine plants response to different qualities of applied effluent. Two parameters indicating the plants’ response to effluent quality are the height and stem diameter. Measurements were contended to 40 replications for every treatment. The best plant development was obtained for irrigation with RO effluent and the poorest for irrigation with secondary effluent from the reservoir. Similar results were obtained for the corn yield.
Management modeling A model for decision support system to aid in the selection of treatment selection for effluent polishing is presented. The model uses Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) and integrates multi-criteria issues into the selection of a specific effluent treatment technology (Okada et al., 2008) (Fig 1).
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RO 0.3/0.7 0.7/0.3 UF SER SEP
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Fig 1. Comparison of corn yield irrigated with different qualities of water (AHP data analysis). Irrigation alternatives: Secondary Effluent from the Ponds (SEP), Secondary Effluent from the Reservoir (SER), UF effluent, RO effluent, a mixture of (0.7UF+0.3RO), and a mixture of (0.3UF+0.7RO).
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A multivariate analysis technique called Co-plot is also used to analyze data concerning corn yield (Raveh, 2000) (Fig 2). This technique is especially suitable for samples with many variables and relatively few observations, as the data about corn yield often is.
Fig 2. Corn production with different qualities of water (Co-plot data analysis). Irrigation alternatives: Secondary Effluent from the Ponds (SEP), Secondary Effluent from the Reservoir (SER), UF effluent, RO effluent, a mixture of (0.7UF+0.3RO), and a mixture of (0.3UF+0.7RO). Conclusion According to data obtained it can be concluded that irrigation with RO effluent with added fertilizer provides the best plant development and eventually the best yield. References Okada, H., Styles, S.W., and Grismer, M.E. (2008).Application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process to irrigation project improvement Part I. Impacts of irrigation project internal processes on crop yields. Agricultural water management, 95, 199-204. Oron, G., Gillerman, L., Bick, A., Manor, Y., Buriakovsky N., and Hagin, J. (2008). Membrane Technology for Sustainable Treated Wastewater Reuse: Agricultural, Environmental and Hydrological considerations. Water Science and Technology, 2008, 57 (9), 1383-1388. Raveh, A. (2000), Coplot: A Graphic Display Method for Geometrical Representations of MCDM, Eur. J. Oper. Res., 125, 670 - 678. ________________________________________________________________________________ Paper for oral presentation at the international conference on INFORMS MSOM (Manufacturing and Service Operations Management) Society Conference, Technion, Haifa, Israel, June 28th & 29th, 2010.
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