Effect of clay minerals and organic matter injection in El-Salhia soil on water use efficiency of cucumber

Field experiments were performed during two summer successive seasons of 2017 and 2018, at a private farm in El- Salhia El-Gedida area, El- Sharqia Governorate, Egypt, to determine the best treatment of sandy soil injection with different rates, from clay and humic acids additive through different doses. In addition to study the effect injected sandy soil by clay and humic acids (IS), different irrigation water levels (IR=100, 90, 80, 70, 60, 50 and 40% calculated based on crop evapotranspiration) and three mineral fertilizer rates (MFR=100, 70 and 40% of recommended chemical fertilizer N, P, K rates) on the marketable yield (MY), crop quality parameters, seasonal actual evapotranspiration (ETa), water use efficacy (WUE) and irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE) for summer cucumber fruits "Cucumis sativus" were investigated. The results reported that; 1) the marketable yield and studied quality parameters except total soluble solid (TSS) and vitamin C (VC) of summer cucumber fruits gave the highest values under IS, IR and MFR =100% treatments for both seasons. 2) Seasonal ETa gave the lowest values: 155.01 and 142.23 mm for both seasons, respectively, under IS, IR and MFR= 40% treatments. 3) The maximum values of summer cucumber fruits WUE and IWUE were 22.03 and 16.63 kg/m3; 26.34 and 18.12 kg/m3 for both seasons, respectively, under IS, IR=60% and MFR=70% treatment. This study concluded that the cultivation of summer cucumber under IS, IR= 60% and MFR= 70% treatment can possibly save about 40% of the applied irrigation water, save about 30% of the total mineral fertilizers rates additive and increased marketable yield of the summer cucumber fruit about 27 and 36% for both seasons, respectively, compared with that under the control treatment (UIS, IR=100% and MFR=100%).