IRAQI JOURNAL OF DESERT STUDIES

Abstract

A field experiment was carried out at the College of Agriculture - University of Anbar to study the water consumptive use of cucumber plant for protected cultivation grown under unheated plastic house condition with dimensions 44 m in length and 9 m in width. Three locally produced hybrids were planted in the experiment and compared to a foreign hybrid approved by the Ministry of Agriculture. Irrigation was carried out when 30, 50 and 70% of available water depletion. The results showed that there was an increasing in water consumptive use during spring season reached 429.04,423.20 and 399.60 mm season-1 compared with 352.42, 344.62 and 344.60 mm season-1 for the autumn season for 30, 50 and 70% depletion of available water respectively. The moisture distribution results showed that the highest moisture content was 30% depletion reached 34.3% within the root zone at a depth of 20 cm, which is closest to the field capacity limit while it was 33.8% and 31.8% for the depletion levels 50 and 70% respectively at the same depth. The depletion level of 30% gave the highest yield reached 3.397 and 5.190 kg plant -1 for the autumn and spring seasons in respectively compared to the 70% depletion treatment which gave the lowest yield was 3.061 and 3.857 kg plant -1. Depletion at 30% gave the best values of water use efficiency reached 113.40 and 142.30 kg m-3 for the autumn and spring seasons respectively.