A.M. Adeeb (Sudan)
Water productivity, Food crops, and Gezira Scheme.
Sixteen years of record between 1988 and 2004 were selected to test the water productivity of food crops in Gezira Scheme. The area grown to each crop was not stable as specified in the rotation adopted by Gezira Scheme. The crop water requirement was calculated using the climatological normals of Wad Medani Meteorological Station and CROPWAT model with staggered sowing for each crop. The productivity of sorghum ranged between 0.15 and 0.41 kg m-3 , wheat water productivity between 0.07 and 0.27 kg m-3 and 0.1 to 0.22 kg m-3 for groundnuts. The low productivity was perhaps related to water management at field level as well as insufficiency of the conveyance system during peak water requirement in September and October. Early low water productivity of sorghum and wheat are related to fast changing financial policies during the nineties of the last century. Groundnut was not influenced by these policies since the crop is grown under sharecropping system where the sharecropper provides heavy input of labor and management from the start of the season to harvesting.
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