Land reclamation activity, such as irrigation, requires monitoring in order to create conditions for a stable and highly productive crop production. It is necessary to monitor the use of water for irrigation in order to prevent or mitigate the consequences of unfavorable, poor quality water on soil irrigation, cultivated crops or equipment. In the province of Vojvodina, the Detailed Channel Network has a great potential. The specificities of this source of water for irrigation need to be observed in the usability of water. In 2010 the sampling was conducted in selected localities in middle Backa and Banat. The results indicate that water quality does not always meet the requirements proposed by the applied classification. What is particularly unfavorable is the fact that the worst quality was registered during the survey conducted at the beginning of the irrigation season on all sites.

Constant and highly productive agricultural productivity in the last decades has a tightly connected to irrigation. It is necessary to monitor the irrigation water quality in order to prevent or mitigate negative consequences on yield, soil and irrigation equipment. Besides the major waterways, the detailed canal network has great potential as a water resource. Peculiarities of this kind of water resources require monitoring of water suitability. During a three-year period of research, water was sampled on some localities in Backa and Banat (Serbia). The results of the research indicate that the water quality does not meet the demands proposed by the classifications. This proves the fact that during the irrigation period, it is necessary to monitor the irrigation water quality.

This work shows the effects of opening the Itebej sluice gate on the metals content of the water and sediment of the Begej canal. A deterioration in water quality resulted, in particular on the first day after opening of the sluice gate, when high concentrations of Zn, Cr, Cu and Pb were detected. The metals content of the surface sediments across the canal at Klek had significantly higher concentrations of Pb, Cr, Zn, Cu and Hg five days after the opening, whereas there were no obvious changes at Itebej. From the metals content of the suspended sediment it can be concluded that the increase in metals contents occurred one day after opening the sluice gate.

Relatively dense network of irrigation channels in Vojvodina is exposed to various point and non-point pollutants impacts. Therefore, deposited channel sediments-sludges can be contaminated with high concentration of dangerous and harmful substances such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). These sediments could have long lasting harmful effects on environmental status, quality and usability of channel water, and especially on surrounding agricultural soil, where dredged sediments are deposited or scattered. In this paper above mentioned conclusions are illustrated by quality analysis of specific irrigation channels sediments in terms of PAH contents in them.

Due to drainage as a significant measure of land reclamation, large part of Vojvodina Province (Serbia) affected by excessive water could become an agricultural land. The stability of ecosystems could be decreased by degrading the biodiversity. Additionally, Vojvodina has cca 6% of sylvan landscape but according to documents of spatial arrangement planning that area should be 14%. In order to solve this problem the implementation of biological measure could increase drainage efficiency by improving biodiversity and increasing the area covered by sylvan landscape, which is likely to do using biological measures of drainage on low productivity areas and buffer strips along canal network.

This paper presents the results of assessment of dredging activities at the Romanian side of the channel on the quality of water and sediment in the Begej channel (in Serbia). Sediment monitoring results have pointed to the increasing content of metals in surface sediments, as well as increased concentrations of some metals (Cd, Ni and Cr) compared to the period from 2008. Results of the water quality after the dredging at the Romanian side shows low metal concentrations, which is probably caused by coprecipitation of metal in the iron in forms of amorphous and hydrated oxide. Monitoring of water and sediment should be conducted continously through the year in order to follow the trend of sediment and water quality and targeted when we know the exact time of some of the activities in the channel.

Water quality conditions of the Tatarnica canal are considered in this paper. Tatarnica is also the main canal of Begec drainage system, which is situated about twenty kilometers from Novi Sad on the west. Water quality of this canal is important, beside others, because its inflow into Danube is near Begecka Jama, which is representative of natural garden with special ecological asset. Results of investigation on this locality during three years are analyzed and presented. According the most relevant water quality parameters from predominant number of samples, water belongs to required category. Sometimes, a bad water quality are recognized, usually when organic pollution was appear, which influence higher value of BOD5.

The paper presents the results of different methods of sequential extraction of metal in sediment of the Great Backa canal in order to obtain data on the total, available and potentially available contents of heavy metals as well as risk assessment in aquatic systems. Based on the results of sequential extraction of metals was found that sediment does not have the risk to the environment in terms of Cr, Cu and Pb concentration while the contents of Ni, Zn and Cd sediment indicates a moderate risk. Results of sequantial extraction of metals indicate that the risk to the aquatic ecosystems decreases in risk assessment based on the pseudo total metal content in the sediment. Thus the results suggest that not all detected metals are bioavailable and that not only on the basis of total metal content of the actual risk may be overestimated.

In this work, the horizontal and vertical distribution of metals in the sediment of the DTD canal was studied, in a 6 km long polluted section between Vrbas and Bezdan. The assess sediment quality and the bioavailability of heavy metals, sediment samples were analyzed for total metal content, acid volutile sulphides (AVS) and simultaneously extracted metals (SEM). A high total metals content was determined (mainly Cu, Ni and Zn), which indicates that the sediment requires remediation. The AVS and SEM results show that in almost every profile, the molar concentration of metals is less than the molar concentration of sulphides, which suggests that in practice, the metals are not bioavailable. The high metals content of the sediment means that drudging of the canal will be necessary, during which, attention will have to be paid to avoid causing negative effects from the metals present in the sediment.