Authors : E.A. Adefisan , S.O. Gbuyiro and J. Omotosho Bayo
Abstract: Irrigation requirements and water scheduling model that takes into consideration the uniqueness of West African weather, soil and crops has been attempted and developed. The West African Irrigation Requirements and Water Scheduling (WIRWAS) model like other forecasting models in the developed countries in which the end users may not necessary be computer literates was developed using an Object Oriented-Programming language (OOP) with good Graphical User Interface (GUI) for easy interaction with the end users. WIRWAS model was designed to run in Windows, the programming language used is Microsoft Visual Basic (version 6.0) as front view while Microsoft Access was used as the back view for storing and updating the database. The model was designed using the common and generally acceptable Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) standard equations for computing all the needed parameters such as evapotranspiration, estimating crop water, soil water deficit, irrigation amount and water scheduling requirements. It was designed in such a way that each page of the model presents to users all the methods for estimating a particular parameter and options for the users to select one of them depending on the data availability. It gives the user opportunity to edit or update some local factors such as weather, crop type/specie, growing stage/length. The model alerts the user when there is need to irrigate and depending on the irrigation equipment (efficiency), the total amount of water to be used as well as the time it will take for the irrigation application is given by the model.
E.A. Adefisan , S.O. Gbuyiro and J. Omotosho Bayo , 2007. Development of Irrigation Requirements and Water Scheduling Model for West Africa . Agricultural Journal, 2: 577-582.