MAXIMIZING SESAME PRODUCTIVITY AND WATER USE EFFICIENCY BY USING HYDROGEL UNDER WATER STRESS CONDITIONS IN SANDY SOILS

A field experiment was conducted during the two summer seasons of 2017and 2018 at the Research and production station of the National Research Centre – Nubaria district (sandy soil) El-Behara Governorate, Egypt. The experiments aimed to evaluate the impact of irrigation water quantities (50, 75 and 100%) and hydrogel (with and without) on seed yield and quality traits of sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) grown under sandy soil conditions. Results indicated that applied irrigation water at 75 % to sesame plants significantly surpassed all other investigated water requirements in biological yield (ton/fed), seed yield (ton/fed) and oil yield (kg/fed). Decreasing the irrigation water requirements to (50%) caused significant decreases in all studied traits. Water use efficiency (WUE) increases with irrigation amount decrease resulting in higher efficiency in seed yield (0.30 kg m-3) and in oil yield (0.15 kg m-3). Adding hydrogel to the soil before sowing produced the highest significant values of growth characters and significantly outyielded the control (without hydrogel) regarding the biological yield (12.6 %), seed yield (12.48 %) and oil yield (16.23 %). Data indicated that combined application of 75 % of water requirements with hydrogel surpassed all other treatments in biological yield (ton/fed), seed yield (ton/fed) and oil yield (kg/fed). Water use efficiency of sesame crop under drip irrigation system increased with decreasing water applied irrigated quantities by using hydrogel. in fact although the lowest water requirement treatment produced the lowest seed and oil. the highest values of water use efficiency for seed and oil yields were achieved by using 50 % of water requirements when hydrogel was added to the soil.