Evaluating the Efficacy of Aquacrop Model Performance in Simulating Soybean Yield (Williams Cultivar) in Golestan Province Under Salt Stress Caused by Caspian Sea Water and Different Levels of İrrigation

Scarcity of water resources in the entire country is more serious in the northern provinces like Golestan. Therefore, farmers have to use saline water or waste waters. One way to adapt to this condition is to use unconventional water such as Caspian Sea water, with lower salinity as compared with water from free seas, for common crops like soybean. Thus feasibility of using Caspian Sea water that has integrated with narrow common water and the calibration of Aquacrop model under the effect of salinity and water stress for soybean crop in Golestan province are more important. The Aquacrop model assumes a linear relationship between the biomass yield (BY) and crop transpiration one one hand and water productivity (WP) value on the other (Steduto and Albrizio, 2005). This model, as compared to other crop models, requires minimal input data and its new version 4.0 (June, 2012) has a salinity module which was used in this research to simulate the grain yield  (GY) and WP of soybean under deficit and saline water irrigation. Furthermore, the AquaCrop model has not often been tested to simulate the yield of soybean under saline conditions in the semi-arid climate of Golestan province. This study aims at evaluating the efficiency of AquaCrop model in soybean yield simulation. The results are to be used for optimizing water consumption under water and saline stress. To this end, an experiment was carried out at the research farm of Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources.