CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

• Definition
 Irrigation is an artificial application of water to the land
in accordance with the crop requirements throughout the
crop period for full nourishment of the crop.
 It is the Engineering of controlling and harnessing the
various natural sources of water, by construction of dams
& reservoirs, canals &headworks and finally distributing
the water to irrigable land.

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Cont---

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Generally the following are some of the factors that necessitate
irrigation.
 Inadequate rainfall
 Uneven distribution of Rainfall
 Increasing the yield of the crops
 Growing a number of crops
 Insuring against drought.
 Growing perennial crops.

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 Objectives of irrigation
 To ensure the proper growth and development
of plant
 To control soil temperature
 To soften tillage pans and clods
 To control some destructives pests and diseases

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 Scope of Irrigation Engineering
 Irrigation Engineering is not only confined to the application of water to the
land for raising crops.
 It includes all aspects and problems extending from the watershed to the
agricultural fields.
 Deals with concepts of various disciplines, mainly :
 Hydrology,
 River engineering ,
 Dam Engineering,
 Soil reclamation,
 Drainage Engineering
 Various hydraulic structures
 Water-Soil-Crop relationships.
 And other related sciences such as :
Flood, Hydropower, and Inland navigation are also studied in Irrigation
Engineering

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 CONT----
 Various aspects of Irrigation Engineering are:
1. Water resources and hydrology aspect
 To design various irrigation structures
Quantity of water at a reservoir site,
Maximum discharge at a river site,
Determination of Reservoir capacity,
Quantity of ground water that exploited economically.
2.Engineering Aspect
 Construction of irrigation structures
Dams and Water power structures
Diversion and distribution structures

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 Cont…
3.Agricultural aspect
 Study agronomy practice
 Study of agricultural characteristics of land
4.Management Aspect
 Successful implementation
 Efficient supervision of all aspect of works

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 Irrigation development status in Ethiopia

 Ethiopia, current irrigation development is

around 0.7Mha, and the performance of
existing schemes is unknown.
 Only 46.8% of the project beneficiaries have
benefited from installed irrigation, even
though 86.5 percent of schemes are
operational and 74.1 percent of the command
area is under cultivation.

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 Cont---
Problems with irrigation in Ethiopia
Poor irrigation scheduling practices have been
considered as the major challenge for the
sustainability of irrigation schemes because of the
lack of simple and practical scheduling
techniques, cost, inaccessibility of soil water
monitoring tools, lack of local climate data and
soil water parameter.

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 Cont---
Irrigation in Ethiopia is considered as a basic
strategy to alleviate poverty and hence food
security.
 it is useful to transform the rain-fed agricultural
system which depends on rainfall in to the
combined rain-fed and irrigation agriculture
system.

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