A participatory and practical irrigation scheduling in semiarid areas: the case of Gumselassa irrigation scheme in Northern Ethiopia

Local extension agents can benefit from the simple procedures in developing irrigation calendars for other irrigated crops. This study gives important lesson for local and regional decision makers, on their endeavour to increase the productivity of small scale irrigated agriculture. This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the study area, practical irrigation schedule development method, alternative irrigation schedules and data collection and analysis methods. Section 3 presents the results. In this section results of the alternative irrigation schedules which included depth of the applied water, yield and yield components, soil salinity and local opinions are presented. Section 4  discusses the results. Section 5 draws conclusions on the main findings of the study and presents policy implications.