Surge irrigation is one of the advanced surface irrigation methods in which water flows intermittently in furrows. Periodic water flow in furrows, as successive surges, causes increase in the flow advancing velocity at the second and later surges; hence application efficiency rises and water distribution becomes more uniform. The main decision variables in surge irrigation are: cycle time, cycle ratio, furrow length and flow rate.The optimization goal is to find such a configuration of decision variables that leads to desirable quality of irrigation. Tabu search is a powerful optimization technique which has been successfully used in various optimization problems such as quadratic assignment problem, job shop scheduling, time table, vehicle routing, telecommunications as well as in design problems. In this study an optimization model has been prepared by using Tabu search technique and the full hydrodynamic model for simulation of surge irrigation. On the basis of field data two options were considered for performance of the model. First, on the basis of given lengths of the furrow the best suitable values for cycle time, cycle ratio and number of surges were obtained while at the second state, for a given number of surges, the most suitable values for furrow length, cycle time and cycle ratio were determined. The results obtained represent a successful performance of the model in optimizing surge irrigation method.
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