Increasing water productivity in crop production--A synthesis

M.H. Ali and M.S.U. Talukder

Agricultural Water Management, 2008, vol. 95, issue 11, 1201-1213

Abstract: Scarcity of water resources and growing competition for water in many sectors reduce its availability for irrigation. Effective management of water for crop production in water scarce areas requires efficient approaches. Increasing crop water productivity (WP) and drought tolerance by genetic improvement and physiological regulation may be the means to achieve efficient and effective use of water. But only high water productivity values carry little or no interest if they are not associated with high or acceptable yields. Such association of high (or moderate) productivity values with high (or moderate) yields has important implications on the effective use of water. In this paper we discussed the factors affecting water productivity, and the possible techniques to improve water productivity. A single approach would not be able to tackle the forthcoming challenge of producing more food and fiber with limited or even reduced available water. Combining biological water-saving measures with engineering solutions (water saving irrigation method, deficit irrigation, proper deficit sequencing, modernization of irrigation system, etc.), and agronomic and soil manipulation (seed priming, seedling age manipulation, direct- or wet-seeded rice, proper crop choice, integrating agriculture and aquaculture, increasing soil fertility, addition of organic matter, tillage and soil mulching, etc.) may solve the problem to a certain extent. New scientific information is needed to improve the economic gains of WP because the future improvements in WP seem to be limited by economic rather than a lack of technological means.

Keywords: Water; scarcity; Deficit; sequencing; Assimilate; partitioning; Seed; priming; Seedling; age; manipulation; Water; productivity; Crop; production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (55)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378-3774(08)00152-2
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:95:y:2008:i:11:p:1201-1213

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 ().