AN EVALUATION OF IRRIGATION PERFORMANCE IN SUDANESE KENANA SUGAR SCHEME

This study was conducted in the commercial cane fields of Kenana sugar scheme, during the cropping seasons of 2011/12 - ‎‎and 2012/13 with a view of evaluation the performance and efficiency of the existing irrigation system, for improving the water management both at the field and the scheme levels. The performance measures analyzed in this study evaluates system performance in terms of water delivery performance, adequacy in relation to crop consumptive use, equity of water distributing irrigation water. Water application efficiency, percent runoff, uniformity coefficient were also evaluated using three different furrow lengths 412, 950 and 1580 m. It was found that as the irrigation season progressed the water delivery performance values show a decreasing trend. The adequacy level is classified as good.

Large errors in equity obtained resulted in increasing the error in management capacity in scheduling and distributing irrigation water. The calculated performance indices (phases of irrigation, infiltration, application efficiency, storage efficiency, percent runoff and the irrigation uniformity) obtained are relatively low.