Eficiencia de riego en el área de riego del Rio Dulce

The Río Dulce Irrigation System is located in the province of Santiago del Estero, Argentina. The system water use efficiency was calculated as 36%. This figure can be ascribed to: 1- inadequate on-farm irrigation management; 2- poor maintenance of canal network. Application of very high depths provokes the water table to rise, resulting in a secondary salinization process. Present paper deals with on-farm irrigation performance. Its main objectives are: 1- to study on-farm irrigation performance; 2- to evaluate on-farm irrigation performance indicators. Data were arranged in two groups. Application efficiency was calculated as 40% for both Group 1 and Group 2. However, causes and consequences are different for each group, depending on irrigation practices. Application efficiency was preferred more than storage efficiency as an indicator of adequacy, while standard deviation is not recommended here as a good indicator of uniformity. Others uniformity indicators (coefficient of variation, Christiansen¿s coefficient and distribution uniformity) had a similar behaviour, being all of them appropriate to evaluate uniformity. It is stressed that no single indicator is able to describe on-farm irrigation performance by itself, but a reasonable number of them can provide valuable information for decision making.