January 2017
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The effects of deficit irrigation and mulching practices to crop yield and crop water use (CWU) of tomato crop were examined at Kano River Irrigation Project (KRIP), during 2014 dry season irrigation farming. The experiments comprised of four levels of water application depths (40, 60, 80, and 100% of weekly reference evapotranspiration) and four levels of mulching; No-Mulch (NM), rice-straw-mulch (RSM), wood-shaving-mulch (WSM) and white-polyethylene-mulch (WPM). The total mean yield ranged from 6.98 to 23.67 t/ha with an annual average of 11.48, 18.48, 11.98 and13.33 t/ ha for NM, RSM, WSM and WPM treatments respectively. The seasonal applied water (SAW) ranged from 362.92 to 907.28 mm while the seasonal crop water use (SCWU) was found to be between 250.73 and 782.60 mm. The results of SCWU of fully irrigated treatment were NM (782 mm), RSM (725 mm), WSM (692.83 mm) and WPM (629 mm). The least value in the range was obtained in the I40 (60% deficit) treatments with WPM, while the highest value in the range was recorded in the I100 treatment with NM. The analysis of variance shows that SCWU was largely influenced by both the water application depth and mulching and it further revealed that the effect of various levels of irrigation and mulching practices on yield were found to be highly significant (**) at 5% level of significance with high mean yield value of 15.84t/ha and 18.48t/ha and also with mean CWU value of 675.40mm and 556.60mm obtained at I80 and RSM. This implies that both deficit-irrigation and mulching practices of tomato crop has significant effect on yield and CWU of tomato grown in the study area. However, it was analytically concluded that the best level of irrigating tomato crop at the site is at I80 giving mean yield of 15.84 t/ha at mean crop water use of 675.40 mm/season and 366 this corresponded to mulching practice of RSM (mean yield of 18.48t/ha and mean CWU of 556.40mm/season) and therefore, tomato producers in KRIP, may adopt water application at I80 and use of RSM as a way of suitable deficit irrigation and water conservation respectively.