Abstract
In Egypt, agricultural lands occupy only about 4% of the total country area, while 85% of the country’s freshwater resources are allocated for these lands. This is due to the adoption of perennial irrigation practices in most Egyptian agricultural lands. As these irrigation practices almost provide more water than crops need, groundwater tables started to rise dramatically in agricultural lands of the Nile River valley. As a result, waterlogging and salinity problems started to aggravate in these areas and it was associated with heavy losses in crop yield. In addition and due to the improper application of fertilizers in waterlogged lands, the groundwater quality started to deteriorate as a result of the continuous deep seepage of fertilizers-contaminated excess water to underlain aquifers. This alerted the “poor drainage” problem in agricultural lands in the Nile River valley, thus the need to practice proper drainage strategies to conserve groundwater quality in these lands and ensure better moisture conditions for crops. Therefore, Egypt has adopted a policy for drainage technology represented in the gravity subsurface drainage systems at the farm level and started to implement many drainage projects in the area of the Nile River valley. As a case study; we explored existed drainage strategies in El-Minia governorate that is located in Upper Egypt and comprises an area of more than 157E+3 hectares of agricultural lands served with subsurface drainage systems. In addition, the governorate has a set of open drains with a total length exceeding 1200 km. In Egypt, agricultural drainage strategies became indispensable to conserve the quality of existing aquifers that underlain agricultural lands alongside ensuring the sustainability of the agricultural process.
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Awad, A., El-Rawy, M., Abdelmawgoud, A.H. (2022). Agricultural Drainage Strategies in Egypt as a Protection Tool Against Groundwater Contamination by Fertilizers: An Overview. In: Negm, A.M., El-Rawy, M. (eds) Sustainability of Groundwater in the Nile Valley, Egypt. Earth and Environmental Sciences Library. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12676-5_9
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