Alternate wetting and drying: A water-saving and ecofriendly rice production system

Muhammad Ishfaq, Muhammad Farooq, Usman Zulfiqar, Saddam Hussain, Nadeem Akbar, Ahmad Nawaz and Shakeel Ahmad Anjum

Agricultural Water Management, 2020, vol. 241, issue C

Abstract: Global warming and declining water resources are threatening the sustainability of rice production and global food security. Conventional continuously flooded system (CF) of rice production is a major contributor to rice production but it requires a huge amount of water input and poses a severe threat to the ecosystem due to emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and accumulation of heavy metals [e.g., arsenic (As) and mercury (Hg)] in the rice grains. The declining soil health, increasing micronutrient deficiencies, and declining organic matter are are also threatening the long term sustainability of the conventional rice production system. In this scenario, alternate wetting and drying (AWD) irrigation system is a promising, water-saving, economically viable, and ecofriendly alternative to CF. In this review, we discuss the influence of AWD on nutrient dynamics, rice growth, and yield formation, grain quality, water use efficiency, emission of GHGs, and economics in comparison with the CF rice production system. Overall, AWD irrigation technique can reduce the total water inputs (25–70 %), CH4 emission (11–95 %), As (13–90 %), and Hg (5–90 %) in rice grains while maintaining similar or better paddy yield (10−20%) than the CF depending upon weather conditions, soil type, degree of dryness, crop duration and crop growth stage. The mild-AWD improves the rice grain quality by reducing the kernel chalkiness (40 %) and increasing the head rice recovery (6%) and concentration of grain micronutrients (like zinc). Being economically viable and environment friendly, AWD system is being adopted in all major rice producing regions but not widely, possibly due to complicated inter-relations of agricultural and socioeconomic systems, and lack of institutional support.

Keywords: Greenhouse gases emission; Climate change; Growth; Grain quality; Grain yield; Arsenic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377420304017
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:241:y:2020:i:c:s0378377420304017

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2020.106363

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().