Mulched drip irrigation is regarded as an effective water-saving irrigation technique that is adopted widely in dryland regions. However, due to the lack of efficient mulch film recovery, residual plastic film fragments accumulating in soil nowadays pose a risk to agricultural production sustainability. To mitigate the pollution result from polyethylene (PE) film mulching and demonstrate the relationship

Water scarcity and rising temperatures are creating serious concerns over the sustainability of agriculture systems in arid regions of the Middle East and North Africa. The aims were (i) to calibrate and evaluate the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) model using detailed experimental datasets on maize (Zea mays L.) yield and water productivity in an arid Mediterranean environment

Atmospheric CO2 elevation (e[CO2]) could alleviate the impact of soil water deficit, yet the underlying mechanisms remains largely elusive. This study aimed to investigate whether different endogenous abscisic acid (ABA) level modulates the response of barley and tomato plants to soil water deficit combined with e[CO2]. Wild type (WT) genotypes (Steptoe barley and AC tomato) and their corresponding

The contraindications of summer maize production, water resource shortages, and soil surface layer structural deterioration in the North China Plain (NCP) have become increasingly prominent. Subsoiling has been widely studied as a key tillage conservation technique. The objective of this experiment is to continue characterization of soil moisture dynamics, soil water consumption and drainage under

In this study, the suitability of major crops currently growing in three case study basins in Catalonia (NE Spain) was assessed for the first half of the 21st century. For this purpose, an estimation was made of net hydric needs (NHN) and a set of agroclimatic parameters. Climate change impacts were estimated at sub-basin level using temperature and precipitation temporal series based on the Third

Spatial structural variations in ridge-furrow unit size and its ratio can result in the drastic fluctuation of soil hydrothermal status, and thereby affect water use and yield formation in dryland crops. Previous studies were little focused on the responses of dryland wheat productivity to the structural changes in ridge-furrow plastic mulching (RFM) system and its mechanism in semiarid eastern African

Plantations, as a form of vegetation restoration, play a critical role in the recent greening of the earth. However, the sustainability of the restored vegetation under precipitation changes has rarely been estimated, largely because of a lack of knowledge about the related plant water adaptation. In the current study, six tree species, including evergreen and deciduous, were selected from a typical

Raised beds (RB) are hailed as means to mitigate the problem of excessive irrigation. However, their adoption and impacts in Egypt are not well-documented. This paper is based on survey data collected from a sample of 691 wheat fields drawn from three major wheat-producing provinces of Egypt. Using area-weights for upward aggregation, we estimated that 19.3% of total wheat area in the three provinces

Socio-ecological systems include diverse resources of complexity involving complicated interactions, feedback, dynamic behavior patterns, heterogeneity in agents’ characteristics and behaviors, as well as system uncertainties. Agent-based modeling is introduced as a tool to simulate different levels of stakeholders and interactions, including individual, group, and institutional agents in complex socio-ecological

Deep soil water is important for trees to combat droughts and thus is an important consideration for assessing sustainability of afforestation. However, the extent to which trees could depend on deep soil for root water uptake (RWU), remains poorly understood. Here we selected five apple orchards, planted in 2008, 2005, 2001, 1998 and 1994 (named A2008, A2005, A2001, A1998, and A1994, respectively)

Water-saving technologies have long been seen as an effective method to reduce irrigation water use and alleviate regional water shortage. However, growing reports of more severe water shortage and increasing application of water-saving technologies across the world have necessitated reassessment of agricultural water-saving. This study develops a simple method based on satellite-based ET partitions

Shallow groundwater often presents multiple behaviors in supporting the sustainability of arid agroecosystems. The behaviors are especially important and complicated for the arid irrigated areas with fragmented land-use types. In the view of understanding the role of shallow groundwater in such areas, the MODFLOW and MT3DMS (with the assistance of HYDRUS-1D) were used to simulate groundwater flow and

Future climate change is predicted to increase precipitation volume in Sweden, and also to modify precipitation patterns and produce more intense rainfall events. This study examined the impact of such changes in three small Swedish watersheds dominated by agricultural land. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was used to investigate the relationship between changes in precipitation (monthly

The water footprint theory has provided an effective approach for evaluating the utilization of freshwater resources in agricultural production. However, there are few studies have explored the dynamic coupling relationship between water footprint and socioeconomic factors, especially from the perspective of regional ecological features. Therefore, the water footprint method was used to investigate

In North China Plain, straw mulching is increasingly applied to the succeeding crops with winter wheat-summer maize double cropping system. However, research results on the effect of maize straw mulching on the yield of winter wheat are inconsistent, and the underlying mechanism of the effect remains unclear. Such information is helpful to guide the field water management for higher yield. In this

As blueberries are susceptible to water stress and their future cultivation in semiarid Mediterranean areas will be challenged by drought, irrigation management strategies will be needed to optimize water productivity and maintain sufficient levels of fruit yield and quality. This study aim was to evaluate the effect of different irrigation levels on plant water status, yield, fruit quality, and water

A series of revegetation programs have been carried out since 1950s, and a large area of cropland has been converted to forestland and grassland through tree plantation and natural vegetation restoration. However, it is still inadequately addressed how plant revegetation changes the characteristics of soil-plant waters. In this study, we compared δ18O and δ2H values of different waters from precipitation

In the Lower Mississippi River Basin, tailwater recovery (TWR) systems are water conservation practices implemented to mitigate downstream nutrient losses and alleviate groundwater depletion as supplemental irrigation sources. This study was conducted to characterize water quality within TWR systems and assess the influence of precipitation and fertilizer application events, as well as reservoir levee

Soil mulching can effectively modify the crop growth environment and increase crop productivity in rainfed agriculture. Accurate estimation of crop evapotranspiration (ET), especially its transpiration (T) component, is crucial for understanding the crop water use and predicting crop yield in agricultural ecosystems. Nevertheless, direct measurement of T in the field is often difficult, expensive,

To address the twin issues of food and nutrition security, the focus of agricultural production should be shifted from biomass productivity to nutritional gains. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the impact of conversion from furrow to drip irrigation on the yield components, water productivity (WP), nutritional yield (NY) and nutritional water productivity (NWP) of tomato during two consecutive

Kiwifruit is widely recognized as a fruit crop sensitive to water stress due to low stomatal regulation. Unfortunately, many of the most important kiwifruit producing areas have been affected by increasing water scarcity due to climate change. Protected cultivation may be used in kiwifruit vines not only to mitigate water stress and potential reductions in fruit quality but also to increase intrinsic

More than half of croplands in the Midwestern United States are equipped with subsurface drainage pipes to reduce excess water in productive but wet areas. The use of drainage systems not only reduces subsurface water table to prevent waterlogging and flooding but also increases nutrient losses by developing artificial preferential flow paths. The exact locations of subsurface drainage pipes are thus

To study the effect of magnetic water irrigation on the improvement of different salinized soils and the growth of cotton in Xinjiang, field experiments were conducted in three salinity soils (slight, medium, and heavy salinity soils), with five intensities of magnetized irrigation water (0 GS (CK,G0), 1000 GS (G1), 3000 GS (G3), 4000 GS (G4), and 5000 GS (G5)). Magnetized irrigation water can change

In this paper, we develop an agro-economic model to plan irrigation interventions. Specifically, we set up an economic optimization model that incorporates typical crop-soil-water physical relationships. The approach described in the paper offers a straightforward estimating procedure that allows to shift from the conventional maximum yield paradigm to drive the irrigation advice to a gross income

Salt drainage from farmlands can potentially degrade the ecological function of ditch wetlands in arid and semi-arid irrigation areas. However, such ditch wetlands may accept different quantities and salt concentrations of upstream inflows, which may have positive or negative effects on the water and salt dynamics of ditch wetland systems and, therefore, on the associated water and salt management

Adequate soil moisture and good soil structure are critical to sustainable productivity of rain-fed apple (Malus pumila Mill) orchards on China’s Loess Plateau. Droughts, poor soil structure, low soil fertility, and a lack of synchronization between plant water demand and rainfall results in low rainfall use efficiency in gentle slope orchards of this area. This study combined soil biomaterial amendment

Soil mulching and nitrogen application have long been applied in rainfed agriculture, but their interactive effects on crop productivity and especially environments remain poorly understood. Field experiments were carried out in 2018 and 2019 to investigate the responses of grain yield, water productivity, nitrogen use efficiency, economic benefit and greenhouse gas (N2O, CO2 and CH4) emissions of

Knowledge-driven "smart" irrigation proposes to achieve explicitly targeted crop yield and/or irrigation water use efficiency (WUE). A coupled crop growth and soil water transport model was established and applied to schedule irrigation for drip-irrigated and film-mulched maize through numerical simulation. By designing various scenarios with either a constant or variable threshold of plant water deficit

Tithonia diversifolia (Tithonia) is performed as an invasive species with a high adaptive potential that can be used for several purposes, including an alternative source of forage for different animal categories. The use of Tithonia is growing rapidly as farmers recognize its high accumulation of biomass, good nutritional value and adaptation to tropical environments. However, the effects of irrigation

The use of organic wastes in southern Brazil is a common practice in the farms and in many of these, the criterion for defining the doses of organic wastes is to meet the N demand by crops. This may mean the accumulation of chemical elements in the soil, especially in soils managed under no-tillage systems, and enhance the transfer of these elements by surface runoff. The aim was evaluated how successive

Climate change scenarios are predicting an increase in temperature as well as more scarce and torrential rainfall episodes. Due to this, an imbalance between grape technological and phenolic maturity is being observed detrimentally affecting grapes composition. In semi-arid areas, irrigation management is a main field practice to influence grape ripening. The goal of the present study was to investigate

Deficit irrigation (DI) and alternate partial root-zone irrigation (APRI) are widely recognized water-saving irrigation methods. This meta-analysis provided a systematic and quantitative result of the relative changes in yield and water use efficiency (WUE) of seven agricultural products (maize, wheat, cotton, potato, tomato, apple and grape) under conventional full irrigation (FULL), APRI and DI globally

Practical solutions to optimise nitrogen use efficiency within modern surface irrigated cotton systems in Australia may be possible by regulating the frequency of water and reducing the N applied, compared with typical current practises. A two-year study examined the effect of irrigating at three different water deficits that applied a similar total irrigation volume: >−60 kPa (HF), between −80 and

A sustainable agricultural system requires increasing water use efficiency and enhancing knowledge of crop water use. This prerequisite is more pronounced in the regions with inadequate water resources and limited observational data such as southern Iran. Therefore, this study aimed at finding the water requirement of mature orange trees (Citrus sinensis (L.) Osbeck, cv. Tarocco Ippolito) by identifying

An irrigation experiment was conducted during 5 years in two hedgerow olive orchards (C and L) cv. Arbequina in Central Spain. The control treatments (C1 and L1) were irrigated to maintain the “wetted bulb” near field capacity throughout the season. Three deficit-irrigation treatments were applied from shoot growth (April-May) until pit hardening (beginning of July) with water applications relative

Agriculture has always been considered as an important source of food supply, and the optimal use of its resources, specially water, for productive agriculture has been given especial attention. In this paper a simulation-optimization model based on the volume balance model for designing an efficient and practical irrigation system is presented. The proposed model uses the multi-objective evolutionary

Combining an olive growth simulation model with a specific module for economic components—namely, net margin (NM) and irrigation water productivity (IWP)—resulted in the AdaptaOlive v2.0 model. This model, used with perturbed climate (PC) and impact response surfaces (IRS), provided a tool that enabled the assessment of the impact of climate change on economic components of Mediterranean olive groves

The knowledge of the crop response to soil water deficit is essential to predict the actual crop water requirements under limited soil water conditions. The mathematical schematization of the crop response under RDI can allow identifying the exact irrigation timing. The threshold of soil water status below which crop transpiration decreases represents a key parameter for the water stress functions

Farmer-led institutional innovations have been touted as the key to improving the management of water resources in irrigation schemes. However, little is known about them in South Africa. This study documents institutional innovations by 28 farmer groups located on four irrigation schemes in KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape provinces, South Africa. Induced institutional innovation theory, Ostrom’s eight

Excessive agricultural inputs meet food demand only at a huge environmental cost, and optimized management strategies are needed to promote the balanced development of food security, water conservation, and environmental sustainability. Here, we conducted a two-year field experiment to investigate annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, yield, water use efficiency (WUE), global warming potential (GWP)

To improve the performance of border irrigation, this study analyzed the spatial variability characteristics of the soil particle content and bulk density, based on soil physical parameters measured at 86 sampling points in the Hetao irrigation district (HID). The soil hydraulic parameters were determined using the RETC, and HYDRUS-1D was then adopted to estimate infiltration parameters of the Kostiakov

The persistent monitoring of evapotranspiration (ET) over the regions suffering from water scarcity is critical for sustainable agricultural water management. Remote sensing provides time- and cost-effective capability to investigate daily ET rates at large scales. Satellite-based actual evapotranspiration (ETa) algorithms typically rely on specifying the upper and lower boundaries of ETa rate over

The current scientific evidence shows that phosphorus (P) appears to mitigate the adverse effects derived from water deficit stress. However, the efficiency of wheat in the use of both components have been not addressed. The objective of this study was to investigate the combined effect of P and water limiting conditions over phosphorus utilization efficiency (PUTE) and water use efficiency (WUE) to

Irrigation plays a fundamental role in sustanining the productivity of agricultural systems in the inland arid area of midwestern China. Deficit irrigation can help to balance yield outcome and water input. Few studies have investigated the impact of deficit irrigation on alfalfa performance, which shows great differences from grain crops in water requirement and management strategy. The study aimed

Farmers are challenged to maintain yield and economic productivity with declining water resources and climatic variability in semi-arid regions worldwide. Growth stage-based deficit irrigation has been suggested as a feasible approach to maintain yields with less water. Experiments were conducted in 2012, 2013, and 2015 in which maize (Zea mays L.) was irrigated under twelve treatments with varied

This study assesses the accuracy of estimating daily grass reference evapotranspiration (PM-ETo) using daily shortwave radiation (Rs) and reference evapotranspiration (ETREF) products provided by the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) geostationary satellite delivered by the Satellite Applications Facility on Land Surface Analysis (LSA-SAF) framework. The accuracy of using reanalysis ERA5 shortwave radiation

Smart irrigation techniques have the potential for improving water application efficiencies at the farm level, thereby helping to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture and providing an economic advantage to farmers. Here we gauge the willingness of farmers to use smart irrigation techniques in water management by conducting a cross-sectional national survey of 678 farmers in Lebanon. A primary

Agriculture is a major consumptive user of water through evapotranspiration (ET). Quantification of actual ET (ETa) is of significant interest to better address water management and improve decision making in the agricultural sector. Many methods to estimate ET are available. However, due to the increasing need of validation of estimates of ET from various techniques, there arises a call for a critical

Moistube® irrigation (MTI) is a newly developed irrigation technique which uses semipermeable membranes to deliver water to the root zone precisely and slowly. The major objective of this study was to investigate the effects of different parameters (operating pressure head, placement depth of Moistube®) of MTI on infiltration behaviors and irrigation efficiency in clay loam soil. The results show that

Saline water is an alternative resource that could be used to meet agriculture irrigation demands. Fouling, particularly that caused by calcium carbonate (CaCO3), often occurs in saline irrigation water distribution systems, and severely restricts the utilization of saline irrigation water. So far, water acidification is the common practice for avoiding CaCO3 fouling. However, this approach is often

Potato growth in humid climate regions is facing increasing challenges due to short period stresses in water deficit and excess. However, there is a lack of quantitative information on the effects of short period of water stress on potato plant growth and its implications on potato yield and tuber quality. In this study, we conducted a pot experiment to test the effects of short period (2 weeks) of

In the agricultural water resources system, the regional yield is hard to be simulated accurately under the impacts of spatial heterogeneities of soil, weather, and crop types. The optimal water allocation schemes may be not in accordance with actual conditions due to neglecting the actual crop growth process. Meanwhile, the uncertainties in the simulation-optimization models are not easy to be addressed

Achieving rice self-sufficiency in West Africa will require an expansion of the irrigated rice area under water-scarce conditions. However, little is known about how much area can be irrigated and where and when water-saving practices could be used. The objective of this study was to assess potentially irrigable lands for irrigated rice cultivation under water-saving technology in Burkina Faso. A two-step

In this study, the adaptation characteristics of orange trees, related to the application over a decade of deficit irrigation (DI) strategies, have been explored. To this purpose, the analysis of a minimal dataset composed of physiological information (stem water potential - Ψstem and sap flow - SF measurements), yield (fruits number and weight) and qualitative parameters (titratable acidity, TA; and

The structural deficit of water resources in Mediterranean areas forces us to search for new sources of water for irrigation as a mandatory requirement for a sustainable agriculture. However, given their critical role in soil fertility, the impacts of irrigation in soil microbial communities must be carefully considered alongside the crop responses. Here, we evaluate the impacts of irrigation with

Faba bean (Vicia faba L.), a major legume crop, helps in maintaining soil health by fixing atmospheric nitrogen (N2) and thus mostly used as a rotational crop. However, faba bean is sensitive to water stress, which limits its yield potential in water-limited environments. The objectives of the present study were to (i) characterize the agro-physiological performance of 14 faba bean genotypes with different

Impacts of soil conservation measures on runoff and soil loss have not been fully considered in the regions where soil erosion control and water resource are both important. In the present study, six years (2014–2019) of runoff and soil loss data from 19 runoff plots in the upstream catchment of the Miyun Reservoir in Beijing, the capital of China were employed to do this work. Results indicated that

Reducing soil nitrate leaching losses from agricultural ecosystem and improving crop yield and nitrogen use efficiency with effective nitrogen management strategies are extremely important for sustainable agricultural development. A-two-year field experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of five nitrogen management strategies (CK: no nitrogen application; FP: applying 210 kg N ha−1 at sowing;