Abstract: As the water shortage is becoming more and more serious, water-saving irrigation has become an important part of agriculture modernization. Raising the level of agricultural mechanization and improving the utility ratio of water are necessary ways to access agriculture modernization. Light weight and small size movable sprinkler irrigation machines have been widely used as new important agricultural equipment. However, most studies have focused on the light and small sprinkler machine which worked under a single loading case or a large-scale fixed sprinkler-drip dual-purpose irrigation machine. In order to realize a reasonable configuration and low energy consumption, a new light small-moving type of machine with a dual purpose of sprinkler irrigation and drip irrigation was introduced, which made the changes of irrigation mode available in accordance with the growth status of different crops or various terrains. The dual-operation irrigation pump 50ZB-25C was used, which was designed by a DOE experiment design and factorial analysis by Jiangsu University. And the 15PY2 impact-drive sprinkler with double nozzles and drip irrigation tube with the rated flow of 2.7 L/h were selected. The running parameters and the water distribution uniformity of the machine were studied by both theoretical analysis and outdoor experiments. In theoretical analysis, the reasonable configuration and optimization design of the system could use the advantages in reducing the energy consumption and maximizing the efficiency of the machine. Finally, the best configuration was determined by using the genetic algorithm for the objective function of minimal energy consumption and high efficiency, the number of the sprinklers was 7, and the number of the drip irrigation tubes was 34. Compared with the rated condition which the machine works under, the energy consumption was reduced by 9.4% under the best configuration. The outdoor experiments were carried out under this configuration. The he experimental results of the operation parameters were consistent with the theoretical values, the relative error of which was 1.08%-2.40%, mainly affected by the wind and terrain slope. It showed that the genetic algorithm had both theoretical and practical significance in the design of the sprinkler irrigation machine. The water distribution uniformity of the machine was also studied by the experiments and the uniformity coefficient of both the sprinkler irrigation and drip irrigation were tested out. The sprinkler uniformity coefficient was 80.0%, and drip irrigation uniformity coefficient reached 93.6%, which were higher than those of the official standard. The data indicated that the machine has superior performance and can help to raise the level of agricultural mechanization in China.