Thirty years of water utilisation improvements in Saudi Arabia
In 1977 there was one modern center pivot in Saudi Arabia. There are now probably around 45,000 operational machines irrigating around 1.3 million hectares.
The 33 year journey from the very small beginning to one of the largest concentrations of center pivots in the world has charted the improvements in modern irrigation techniques.
In ’77 the predominant Saudi irrigation system was flood which, even when well done, probably makes effective use of only 40% of the available water. The center pivot of the late ‘70s, even with it’s many weakness improved this to probably 60% usage (a 50% increase in water use over flood), still 40% was lost to evaporation, run-off, deep seepage and evaporation from the crop canopy.
Other techniques were also tried in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s – wheel-lines with impact sprinklers were better than flood but not as good as the center pivot. Big guns were also tried but the effect of the soil of the impact of big droplets, coupled with wind distortion of the spray pattern and very high evaporation losses soon made the system unattractive.
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