Irrigated agriculture has been deemed a wasteful water user as a result of inefficiencies in most irrigation systems. Pressurized irrigation needs a steady pumping system to ensure constant uniformity of the irrigation system, which is hard under directly coupled solar-powered irrigation. This study aimed to evaluate the performance of two (2) different water application systems namely spray tube and sprinkler irrigation systems. The irrigation efficiencies of the installed irrigation systems were found to be high with spray tubes compared to sprinkler systems, recording 80.30% and 73.70%, respectively. Christiansen coefficient of uniformity (CU), distribution uniformity (DU), and mean application rate (MAR) were evaluated for the spray tube and sprinkler irrigation systems as 83.1%, 80.5%, and 15.5 mm/h, respectively, for the spray tube irrigation system (STIS) and 82.5%, 73.7%, and 4.1 mm/h, respectively, for the sprinkler irrigation system (SIS). These results indicate that spray tube irrigation is more efficient and requires less pressure to apply water to crops compared to sprinkler irrigation systems. This is attributed to water losses in the form of tiny droplets as a result of wind drift and evaporation losses.

Keywords: Irrigation, Sprinkler, Spray Tube, Solar-Powered, Performance Evaluation