Evaluation of the Volume of Applied Water and Agricultural Water Productivity in Walnut Production Regions in the Country

Walnut is one of the most valuable garden products of the country, which will be very profitable for gardeners if the water and food needs are met on time. During the growth period, the walnut tree goes through different stages, during these stages, the lack of sufficient and timely irrigation will affect not only the crop of the same year, but also the quantitative and qualitative production of the next years. The results of various researches have shown that the walnut tree is sensitive to the lack of water and the lack of soil moisture leads to a decrease in yield and the quality of the product in terms of color and size. Researches in the country are mainly focused on determining the water requirements of walnut trees, the effects of low irrigation and the quality of irrigation water on the quantitative and qualitative performance of walnuts, and not many researches have been done on determining the amount of water used by walnut trees in the country. The review of the articles shows that walnut is one of the water-bearing products among garden products, and due to the severe limitation of water resources in the centers of production of this product in the world, many researches focused on determining the amount of water used for walnut trees and low management. It has been irrigated. On the other hand, the researches carried out in the country have mainly been carried out either in limited areas or in the form of research projects on the scale of experimental plots. Therefore, there is almost no comprehensive report on measuring and estimating the volume of water used for this water-bearing product in the country. Based on this, in the current research, the amount of water consumed by walnut gardeners in the country has been measured.

Considering that the main purpose of the research was to measure the volume of water used for walnut production in different regions of the country, the water given by gardeners for walnut production during two cropping seasons was measured without interfering in irrigation management and at the level of users' gardens. Is. In this research, due to the fact that the yield of walnut is affected by the age and climatic factors such as frosts, the measurements were made during two consecutive crop years 1396-1397 and 1397-1398. Based on this, the provinces of Hamedan, Kerman, Lorestan, East Azerbaijan, Kermanshah, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Kohgiluyeh and Boyerahmad, Zanjan, Fars, Markazi and Qazvin, where the area under cultivation and the amount of walnut production in them are about 70 and 75% of the whole country, respectively. include, were selected as pilot areas for the implementation of the current research. After that, in each province, city or cities, the top producers of the mentioned product were determined in terms of the level of cultivation and production, and finally, the desired gardens were selected in the cities. In this regard, we tried to select the gardens in such a way that they cover most of the conditions such as climate, garden area, planting intervals, soil texture, water and soil salinity, irrigation methods and different managements, etc. The volume of water supplied was measured with the WSC flume or ultrasonic flow meter without interfering with the irrigation program.

The results of the research showed that the volume of applied water of walnut orchards in the studied areas varied from 3050 to 14800 m3/ha and its weighted average in the country was about 7000 m3/ha. Also, the amount of water used in the selected gardens in two methods of surface and drip irrigation was obtained as 7675 and 5709 m3/ha, respectively. The two-year average yield of walnuts in the production areas varied from 520 to 3280 kg/ha and its weight average was 1235 kg/ha. Based on this, the productivity index of irrigation water varies from 0.04 to 0.71 kg/m3 and its average weight in the country is about 0.20 kg/m3. The general results of the research indicate that in the investigated provinces, the amount of water used in walnut orchards is less than the gross water requirement of this product and there is a kind of forced under-irrigation in walnut orchards.