Hydrogels are a class of polymer materials that can absorb large amounts of water without dissolving and they vary in their origin and composition. In our study, cellulose-based hydrogel was synthesized staring from rice straw as a source for the lignocellulosic material, where cellulose was first isolated after pulping treatment followed by bleaching step resulting of 90.8% holocellulose. The resulting hydrogel was further characterized with FT-IR and SEM. On the other hand, comparison between the rice straw-based hydrogel (HS) and the commercially available acrylamid hydrogel (HA) was studied for improving maize and pean production under water stress. To investigate these purposes, field experiment was performed by using two different irrigation frequencies (once every second day F1 and every three days F2) and three irrigation rates (I1=100, I2=85 and I3=70% of water requirements). Every sub-plot divided into three sub-plots contained H0 (without any addition of hydrogel), HS and HA treatments. The experimental results demonstrated that, the irrigation frequency was found to be important, and those using HS gave good results compared with the commercial ones (HA).