4d.Progress report.
This report serves to document research conducted under a specific cooperative agreement between ARS and the Arab Agronomist Association (AAA), Palestinian Authority. Starting October 1, 2005, AAA became the cooperating institution with ARS as a replacement for of Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (CRIS 0210-22310-002-48S). Funding is provided under a reimbursable agreement with the Department of State (see CRIS 4001-22310-002-44R) and work is in partnership with Jordan’s Ministry of Agriculture (see CRIS 4001-22310-002-46S.) and Israel (see CRIS 4001-22310-002-47S.) Water scarcity and competing demands for water have become one of the key barriers to sustainable agriculture production in the Middle East and the Palestinian Authority Areas. Under the direction of Drs. Tom Trout, James Ayars, ARS Water Management Research Laboratory, Parlier, CA, and Dr. Steven Evett, ARS Soil and Water Management Research Unit, Bushland, TX, the co-operators are working to establish the technological and human infrastructure required to achieve long-term sustained water conservation in the U.S. and Middle East.

As part of the Irrigation Management Information System (IMIS) project, a Palestinian researcher is visiting ARS for one-year program. The Palestinian visiting researcher is Mr. Nedal Katbeh-Bader, a Theme Leader for the Watershed Management-Regional Initiative for Dryland Management with the Ministry of Environment, Palestinian National Authority. Mr. Katbeh is working at the USDA-ARS-Water Management Research Lab in Parlier, California with ARS scientists and Visiting Researchers from Israel and Jordan on the multilateral US-Middle East IMIS project, from the November 15, 2004 through November 15, 2005.

The main achievement pertains to evaluating different soil moisture measurement devices and techniques. Four devices are under evaluation: Neutron Moisture Meter, Sentek Enviro-Scan and Diviner 2000 Capacitance Probes and TRIME. This experiment is conducted in cooperation with Dr. Steve Evett ARS, Bushland, TX, who visited the experiment site at USDA-ARS, Parlier, California (May 26-28, 2005) for training purposes. This included training on access tube installation, data collection and processing. Twelve access tubes for each device were installed in a pepper crop field. Data collection started in from April and continues until late September 2005. In addition, Mr. Katbeh-Bader was involved in many research activities at Parlier, such as calibration of twin-lysimeters and continuous measurement of soil moisture and stem water potential of a peach orchard, and preparation of a calibration curve for a Neutron Moisture Meter.

During this period, AAA project cooperators traveled to Migal, Israel for IMIS related training. The training covered meteorological station installation, connection of the climatic sensors, data acquisition and maintenance. The Palestinian cooperators are working closely with U.S., Israeli, and Jordanian scientists to build a network of agricultural meteorological stations with an Internet site (www.merimis.org), to improve knowledge of crop water use for several crops in the region, and to attain a positive outlook for future collaboration on the pressing water issues in the region.

Further, the Palestinian cooperator installed two additional weather stations in addition to the Zababdih station that was installed during the previous reporting period in the northern West Bank region. The two additional meteorological stations were installed; in Qalqilya and Jericho regions. These two sites are ideal for the IMIS project due to the intensive irrigated agricultural production.