Evaluation of Yield and Water Use Efficiency of Greenhouse Cucumber in Drip and Capillary Wick Irrigation Systems in Different Soil Textures Using Aquacrop Model

This study was performed to evaluate the AquaCrop model in the crop yield, biomass, crop, and biomass water use efficiency of greenhouse cucumber with two methods of the capillary wick and drip irrigation and three soil textures including Clay-Loam marked with (S1), Sandy-Clay-Loam (S2) and Sandy-Loam (S3) in three replications and two cultivation periods in spring 2018 period (1) and autumn 2018 period (2). Data analysis was done based on compound analysis of variance and mean comparison was done based on Duncan's multi-range test. The data of the first period was used for calibration and sensitivity analysis, and the data of the second period was used to validate the model. The root-mean-square error (nRMSE) and coefficient of determination (R2) were used to validate the model. Based on results in the drip irrigation system, the maximum yield, and water use productivity were observed with 79.64 ton/ha and 46.54 kg/m3 in T2S1 treatment, and in the capillary wick irrigation system, the highest yield, and water use efficiency were observed with 62.05 ton/ha and 44.76 kg/m3 in W2S3. The model investigation results revealed that the highest simulation accuracy was observed in W2S3 treatment so that the nRMSE index in crop yield, biomass yield, crop water use efficiency and biomass water use efficiency were respectively 2.80, 1.70, 1.10, and 1.70 percent were calculated. Due to the optimality of all conditions in the model, most of the estimated parameters were higher than the observational data, still, the increasing and decreasing trend of model simulation in estimating product performance values was completely consistent with the observed data.