Agriculture and Agribusiness

Irrigation System Design and Scheme Planning

An irrigation scheme is sized on a water right, a crop and a peak demand that occurs for a few weeks a year, and schemes fail when any one of those was assumed rather than established. This course establishes them. Delegates work through crop water requirement, reference evapotranspiration and the crop coefficients that convert climate data into a demand figure. Peak demand and system capacity follow, including the irrigation interval and the arithmetic that links area, flow and hours of operation. Water source assessment is covered across rivers, dams and boreholes, with reliability rather than average yield as the design basis. System selection is addressed between surface, sprinkler and micro methods, matched to crop, soil, topography and the labour available. Hydraulic design follows through pipe sizing, friction loss, pressure variation and the uniformity a design achieves. Layout and block design are covered. Costing and the water cost per hectare are addressed. The course closes on commissioning, on evaluation and on the reasons schemes underperform.