Effect of the optimized regulated deficit irrigation methodology on water use in barley under semiarid conditions

J.J. Pardo, A. Martínez-Romero, B.C. Léllis, J.M. Tarjuelo and A. Domínguez

Agricultural Water Management, 2020, vol. 228, issue C

Abstract: In areas with low availability of irrigation water, it is necessary to improve water-use efficiency in crops, especially if their profitability is low. This is the case of barley in the Castilla-La Mancha region (Spain), where farmers are demanding methods to achieve adequate harvests with a supply of low amounts of irrigation water to this particular crop. The optimized regulated deficit irrigation (ORDI) methodology was developed to maximize the yield of annual crops under water-scarce conditions. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of ORDI for a limited amount of available irrigation water on yield, water productivity and water footprint of a barley crop (Shakira cv.) under semiarid conditions. To this end, five irrigation treatments were performed over three years (2015–2017) on an experimental farm located in Albacete province: no deficit (ND) (control), and four with different volumes of available irrigation water, corresponding to 100 % (T100), 90 % (T90), 80 % (T80), and 70 % (T70) of barley net irrigation requirements (2500 m3 ha-1) for the weather conditions of the intermediate typical meteorological year. As expected, yield decreased with deficit and ND was the treatment that achieved the highest average yield (9049 kg ha-1). While the average yield decreased by 19.4 % and 29.9 % with regard to ND, the highest average irrigation water productivity was for T80 and T70 (average 3.63 kg m-3), as these treatments reduced the average amount of irrigation water by 39.1 % and 46.7 %, respectively. Nevertheless, in terms of water-use sustainability, the most interesting treatment was T80, which achieved the lowest average water footprint (531 m3 Mg-1) while ND showed the highest (9.5 % greater). Consequently, ORDI yielded barley harvests with more efficient water use under limited volumes of available irrigation water and unknown climatic conditions, which were drier than typical in the three experimental years.

Keywords: MOPECO model; ORDI; Water footprint; Semiarid; Optimization; Irrigation scheduling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:228:y:2020:i:c:s0378377419311837

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2019.105925

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