Competition for water between agriculture and the environment is a growing problem in irrigated regions across the globe, especially in endorheic basins with downstream freshwater lakes impacted by upstream irrigation withdrawals. This study presents and applies a novel simulation-optimization (SO) approach for identifying water management strategies in such settings. Our approach combines three key

Maize production in semi-arid areas is increasingly at risk due to limited and uneven precipitation, and is further constrained by unvalidated nutrition management practices. Matching fertilization levels to regional precipitation, however, can ensure sustainable water use and crop productivity. From 2014–2017, a 4-year field experiment was performed to evaluate the effects of fertilization at five

The study of water-nitrogen (N) interaction to improve crop drought resistance and reduce environmental pollution has increasingly become a hot topic. However, the response of yield and quality of paddy rice and upland rice to N nutrition under different irrigation regimes is little known. Continuous flooding cultivation (CF, control) and bare-dry cultivation (BD) were used to cultivate paddy rice

In this paper, a new methodology is developed for the allocation of groundwater to agricultural lands considering the cultivated area of different crops, selling price and net benefit of products, and crops’ water requirements. The methodology includes an integrated model with daily time steps for simulating soil water balance, cultivar growth, and groundwater level fluctuations. The developed simulation

In recent years more recognition is given to the benefits and risks of private smallholder irrigation development across sub-Saharan Africa. It is acknowledged for its capacity to adapt to local circumstances and challenges. This study assesses the heterogeneous character of private smallholder irrigation in the challenging environment of southern arid Zimbabwe, where family farms operate along sand

The present study evaluated the potential impacts of climate change of Hamadan-Bahar plain on dimensions including economical, physiological, hydrological and meteorological aspects. The results showed that climate change in the region has negative impacts on the agricultural sector by reducing the crop yield as well as groundwater balance. In the most optimistic scenario on the horizon of 2090, rainfall

Groundwater banking through managed aquifer recharge (MAR) can augment the irrigation water supply with less social and environmental opposition than dams. Our high spatial resolution hydro-economic model investigates the influence of site conditions such as natural recharge, proximity to surface water sources, and the agronomic conditions of crops on four model outcomes: optimal MAR, final groundwater

Drought-tolerant forage crops have huge development potential in drylands taking into account the current global challenges (climate change, natural resources overexploitation and increasing food demand). However, little is known about the trade-off among yield, nutritional quality, and soil water consumption for dryland forage farming production in semi-arid regions. This research compared the two-year

Climate change has drastic impacts on water resources and agricultural productivity, especially in arid and semi-arid environments. The present study simulated and explored the economic impacts of climate change on the water and agriculture sectors of the Zayandehroud river basin in Iran for the years 2040 and 2070in three major phases. In phase I, two general circulation models (GCM) (HadCM2 and CGCM3T63)

Water saving by agricultural virtual water trade (VWT) is regarded as a new way to address water shortage, and many studies have considered it at local and global scales. However, the existing calculation methods do not consider how agricultural products should be produced in export and import areas without crop trade. We believe that three facts related to irrigation should be considered in water

Taiwan intends to select an economic crop to be planted in a minority region to improve the farmers’ income and soil and water conversation. This paper therefore applied a combination of three well-established techniques, including Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution), to optimize the selection process of an economic

The application of technology and the development of data analysis, such as remote sensing and regression algorithms, are an easy and inexpensive way to estimate parameters related to water management, such as actual evapotranspiration (ETa) and soil water content (SWC). Therefore, the objective of this study was to predict the water management parameters with vegetation indices (VIs) and regression

Rice is one of the largest water-consuming crops. Alternate wetting and drying (AWD) is now an effective water-saving practice for rice cultivation that has been widely applied across the world. AWD may increase denitrification loss. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. This study investigated denitrifier activity, abundance and community structure in the rice rhizosphere and bulk soil

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is a globally important vegetable recognized for its positive health benefits. As most of the vegetable production, tomato require significant amount of agronomic inputs. However, recent shifts in climate patterns in terms of timing and amount in rainfall, patterns in air temperature, and the associated extreme events have caused harm and disruption to the agricultural

High resolution measurements of trunk diameter fluctuations (TDF) provide a means to study short-term and long-term stem radial variations and response to water stress of fruit trees. There is a lack of information, however, on the performance of TDF measurements on fast-growing poplar trees. To both clarify the intra-annual and inter-annual growth patterns and to diagnose water status of young poplar

It is understood that the major transport pathways for the soluble nutrients nitrate (NO3-N) and orthophosphorus (OP) from cropped fields to streams in the U.S. Cornbelt are tile drainage and groundwater seepage. The relative contribution of each, however, has not been well quantified and can vary between fields and watersheds. In this study, we used intermittent grab sample water quality monitoring

The use of moisture readings by the indirect method has been increasing in recent years, such as the use of a frequency domain reflectometry capacitance (FDR) technology, but the use of this equipment requires a calibration for the soil. Usually these equipments are calibrated by soil layers, but the calibration of an FDR sensor by different soil tillage has never been performed. Therefore, this study

Stomata are the channels by which plants exchange water vapor and carbon dioxide with the environment. Clarifying the change from stomatal limitations (SL) to non-stomatal limitations (NSL) of photosynthesis and their critical conditions is vital for accurately recognizing the degree of crop drought and formulating countermeasures. A field experiment was carried out from 2013 to 2015 to study the critical

Olive trees are iconic to the Mediterranean landscape and in recent times, have expanded to other regions across the globe that share similar climatic conditions. Olive oil production benefits from irrigation, but with a changing climate and uncertainty in precipitation patterns, wastewaters will likely play a larger role supplementing irrigation water requirements. However, due to their relatively

Strip intercropping has been widely applied in arid and semi-arid regions due to high and stable productivity and efficient utilization of resources. Intercropping can increase water use efficiency (WUE) of crops and optimize the soil moisture environment for crop development. Competition and complementarity are two aspects of the same interspecific relationship between crops, and a quantitative understanding

The cash crop industry has been developed extensively around the world, but in some cases high yields are obtained at the expense of large water and fertilizer input. Although the yield is higher under these practices, it may not be a high-efficient approach from the perspective of crop quality, economical revenue and sustainability in a long term. To solve this problem, an integrated high-efficient

In Mediterranean-climate regions, irrigated agriculture is especially vulnerable to the risk of hydrological drought, and irrigators are particularly concerned about the negative effects of water supply failures. This paper proposes a new index-based drought insurance scheme to cover the risk of water supply failures in irrigated agriculture that overcomes the problems currently hindering the development

Afghanistan has an arid to semi-arid climate where irrigated agriculture largely depends on scarce irrigation water supplies from snowmelt from the high raised mountains. Under growing water scarcity, farmers not only need to use the available water more wisely but have to develop alternative options for coping water scarcity. Deficit irrigation schedule can be one of the options to mitigate the adverse

The plastic-mulched ridge and furrow rainwater harvesting (PRFRH) system improves precipitation utilization and yield in semi-arid regions. For densely planted crops such as winter wheat, however, the ridges reduce planting area. Thus, optimal ridge and furrow configurations for winter wheat cultivation remain unknown. Here, we evaluated the effects of various ridge-furrow ratios on soil hydrothermal

Plastic-film mulching (PM) has been widely adopted for dryland maize (Zea mays L.) in the Loess Plateau of China, whereas its impact on grain yield (GY) varies considerably. Therefore, it is crucial to make some feasible strategies that aim to improve the productivity of PM systems. Using the data obtained from peer-reviewed publications, we conducted a meta-analysis to (1) analyze the climate regions

Irrigation and nitrogen fertilizer management (INM) are essential for maize production. In northwest China, the conventional INM, in which irrigation of about 90-120 mm is carried out four or five times with large nitrogen (N) fertilizer inputs (approximately 450 kg N ha-1), generally result in low water use efficiency (WUE) and N use efficiency (NUE) with a series of environmental pollution problems

Suitable spectral monitoring models of canopy water content provide a scientific basis for real-time dynamic, accurate, non-destructive diagnosis over large acreage. This work investigates winter wheat under different water treatments to examine the relationship between canopy water content and spectral reflectance. Principal component regression spectral monitoring models are developed based on the

During wetting-drying cycles, divergence is often found between the immediately improved soil water conditions after re-watering and the recovery of plant water status from stress, which ensues only gradually. Such an apparent hysteresis effect of water stress (HEWS) is usually neglected in simulating root-water-uptake (RWU) by empirical models. To consider HEWS in the empirical macroscopic RWU model

Automated irrigation scheduling of grain crops using a combination of plant and soil water sensing feedback has not been widely investigated. A three-year study was conducted at Bushland, Texas to investigate irrigation management of grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor, L.), in 2012 using plant feedback with a single thermal stress threshold, and in 2018 and 2019 using multiple thermal stress thresholds

N fertilization is often viewed as a cheap insurance against yield loss in vegetable production because of the generally large added value, resulting in application of fertilizer N often in excess of actual crop demand. In combination with the low fertilizer N recovery by many vegetable crops and the often excessive irrigation, this may lead to both health and environmental risks related to high nitrate

The managements of fertilization and surface mulching in apple orchards have both potential positive environmental and productive effects due to their benefits of water infiltration and soil nitrate movement in field ecosystem. However, the research to date had tended to focus on single measure rather than both together. The aims of this study were to determine how integrated management for apple orchards

The optimization of irrigation strategies with the goal of increasing water utilization efficiency and achieving higher yield is an important farming practice that helps balance groundwater use and food security during water shortage periods in the North China Plain (NCP). In the present study, the AquaCrop model was used to simulate winter wheat yield, evapotranspiration (ET), water productivity (WPET)

Extensive field research for data collection to conduct economic comparisons of variable rate irrigation (VRI) with fixed (uniform) rate irrigation (FRI) and no irrigation (NI) in combination with three nitrogen application strategies of fixed (uniform) rate fertigation (FRF), variable rate fertigation (VRF) and pre-plant nitrogen (PP) management for maize (Zea mays L.) were conducted. Research was

Agricultural system modeling has become an effective tool for analyzing and quantifying the effects of varying management practices and environmental conditions on crop production and nutrient export from croplands. The use of such modeling tools provides useful insights in identifying the most effective management practices for enhancing productivity, sustainability, and resiliency of agricultural

Accurate knowledge of evapotranspiration (ET) and irrigation return flow is critical for the sustainable management of water resources in arid inland river basins. Flood irrigation with large amounts of groundwater and resulting return flow may be not suitable for cropland with long cultivation history. In the midstream of the Heihe River Basin of northwestern China, flood-irrigated cropland with rotation

Quinoa is a very versatile crop, amenable to the hot agronomical conditions of the Middle East, where it is cultivated under irrigation, frequently using saline water. This study aims to compare different approaches for early detection of the effect of salinity on the agronomic performance of this crop. A set of 20 genotypes was grown under drip irrigation in sandy soil at the International Center

The utilization of water resources and water security in Central Asia are critical to the stability of the region. This paper assesses the water security of the five Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) by using the projection pursuit model based on particle swarm optimization (PSO-PEE). The results show that the average annual water consumption

The lack of natural resources, especially good-quality cropland and renewable water resources is threatening food production potential in marginal agricultural ecosystems, which are already negatively affected by climate change. Since the world's major crops are proving inadequate to supply the calories and nutrients for people in these areas, new crops are sought that can withstand harsh ecological

Distributed crop models were considered a useful tool for allocating rational water resources. However, how to upscale the crop model into the regional scale is a key issue because the associated crop parameters tend to have spatial heterogeneity according to their feedback to the environment. The remote sensing may provide a possible method for generating the spatial distribution of crop parameters

This study aims to identify the optimal configuration of a hose reel traveling irrigator based on a multi-objective evaluation. We identified nine evaluation indicators (two empirical: irrigation efficiency, yield increase; two technical: spray uniformity, application rate; two economic: initial investment, annual operating costs; three social and environmental: labor intensity, productivity, greenhouse

Vegetable growers in Europe are continually under increasing pressure to optimize irrigation and nutrient management. This results from the widespread effects of climate change and of competition from other sectors for water, and increasing societal pressure to reduce nutrient contamination of water bodies. The widespread and growing adoption of drip irrigation and fertigation provides vegetable growers

In dryland agricultural production areas, knowledge on the growth and variation of winter wheat root systems under different mulching methods is important for guiding winter wheat production. We conducted a two-year field trial to explore the effects of different mulching practices on the spatial-temporal distribution of root growth, soil water storage, and grain yield. Four cultivation practices were

Groundwater-irrigated Boro rice is produced on 83 % of the net cultivable area (NCA) in North-West (NW) region of Bangladesh. Falling groundwater levels in many parts of the region raised concerns about the sustainability of groundwater irrigation. It is generally accepted that, in the absence of a comprehensive scientific study, uncontrolled groundwater use for Boro rice cultivation leads to water

Winter wheat is the predominant crop in the Huaibei Plain of Anhui Province, China. The Huaibei Plain has a transitional climate and a shallow water table. As global warming accelerates, climate change in the area may impact agricultural production. In shallow groundwater regions, capillary rise can be large, and it can act as an important water resource for crop use. However, it is not clear how climate

A tomato field experiment under deficit irrigation treatments was established to assess the feasibility of nonlinear mixed models to predict the change in the canopy Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) along the growing season. The irrigation doses were 50, 70, 85, and 100 % of the actual evapotranspiration (ETc). The experiment was performed in the Peruvian Arid Coastal Region (13.10 S,

The concept of groundwater vulnerability is used in groundwater management and risk assessment. Among the parameters contributing to groundwater vulnerability are: depth to groundwater; net recharge rate; aquifer media; topography; vadose zone; hydraulic conductivity; aquifer thickness; and, pumping density rate in case of over-pumping. Groundwater is considered an important water resource in Egypt

Cyanotoxins are secondary metabolites of the ubiquitous cyanobacteria and exert their toxicity to plants and humans. Human health can be impacted by cyanotoxin bioaccumulation in crops via irrigation from contaminated water reservoirs. In the present study we conducted an ecologically relevant experiment in terms of toxin dose, cultivation time and the use of agricultural soil and naturally contaminated

It is still a long-term challenge to improve crop production and economic benefits in arid area of northwest China. The objective of this study was therefore to propose a new and promising cotton/mung bean intercropping (CMBI) system to cope with the challenge based on the traditional monocropping cotton (MC) system. A two-year field experiment was conducted to evaluate crop production and economic

Soil and water conservation is an important and based work of sustainable agricultural development. However, how to estimate the real condition of quality evaluation system of soil and water conservation for sustainable agricultural development has become a problem. In this paper, an evaluation system and method provides powerful tools for the soil and water conservation based on induced ordered weighted

The least limiting water range (LLWR) is a modern and widely used soil physical quality indicator based on predefined limits of water availability, aeration, and penetration resistance, providing a range of soil water contents in which their limitations for plant growth are minimized. However, to set up the upper and lower limits for a range of soil physical properties is a challenge for LLWR computation

Water and soil resource are fundamental natural resources and one of the determinant factors of the ecological environment. Soil erosion not only affects economic development, but also triggers the occurrence of natural disasters that threaten people's property and lives. Therefore, it is necessary to take various and effective measures and technologies to protect water and soil resources, to promote

Considerable spatial variability in soil hydraulic properties exists within a field, even in those considered homogeneous. Spatial variability of water as a major driver of crop heterogeneity gains particular relevance within the context of precision agriculture, but modelling has devoted insufficient efforts to scale up from point to field the associated ‘cause-effect’ relations of water spatial variations

In Iran, pistachio (Pistachia vera L.) orchards are mostly irrigated by surface irrigation. In this research, the border surface irrigation method was compared to five different irrigation systems. The research was carried out for four years at the Pistachio Research Center of Iran (IPRC) in Rafsanjan. A split-plot design was used with six irrigation systems with main plots; surface, drip, subsurface

Diverse vegetable production systems are an essential part of European food production. Nitrogen (N) fertiliser and commonly irrigation are integral to European vegetable cropping. Applications of N and irrigation are generally based on the experience of growers and technical advisors. Commonly, applications of both exceed crop requirements causing nitrate (NO3−) leaching. This can result in NO3− contamination

The number of fertigation splits through center pivot irrigation system is a major concern for implementing sprinkler fertigation due to the possible losses caused by drift and volatilization. Field experiments were conducted at two sites of the semi-arid regions in the North China Plain with different soil fertilities to investigate the influence of the number of fertigation splits and the nitrogen