Drip irrigation is one of the most efficient systems in delivering water to the plant root zone. Research hasshown that the saturated, or nearly saturated, surface beneath the emitter may increase evaporation thereby reducing theirrigation efficiency. To increase the efficiency of surface applied drip irrigation on permanent tree crops a sand tubeirrigation (STI) method was developed and tested. The sand tube method consists of removing a soil core beneath theemitter and filling the void with coarse sand. A weighing lysimeter was designed and instrumented to directly measuretemporal evaporation during irrigation and for a period of three days after irrigation ceased. Thermocouples were usedthroughout the soil profile to detect the temperature variation and also to determine temporal movement of the wettingfront. The results indicated that for the surface applied drip irrigation method, approximately 30% of the applied waterevaporated during the four-day period after irrigation. The STI method resulted in approximately 4% of the applied waterbeing evaporated. The STI method allowed more water to remain in the soil profile thereby increasing the irrigationefficiency.
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Meshkat et al. (1998) studied this question.