Rising demand for food, fiber, and biofuels drives expanding irrigation withdrawals from surface water and groundwater. Irrigation efficiency and water savings have become watchwords in response to climate-induced hydrological variability, increasing freshwater demand for other uses including ecosystem water needs, and low economic productivity of irrigation compared to most other uses. We iden...

Crop production is a process of multiple inputs (water and nutrients, etc.), and the relationships between the inputs and crop yield are very complex. This study used a model for data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate the efficiency of irrigation-fertilization schemes for winter wheat in North China. The field experiments were conducted at the Xiaohe Irrigation Experiment Station in Centra...

A 2 x 2 nutrient and water factorial experiment with four replications was installed in an 8-yr-old stand of Ioblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) growing on an infertile, excessively drained sandy site in Scotland County, North Carolina. After the fourth year of treatment, estimated stem volume increment, total biomass production, and peak leaf area index (LAI) increased 152%, 99%, and 101%, respecti...

Despite of the water use increment for other sectors than agriculture, the water use for irrigation is the main water consumer in global scale. However, irrigation has been pressured by the civil society to improve water use efficiency in agriculture, to prevent water scarcity for human population that grows continuously, mainly in developing areas of the planet. On the other hand, the irrigati...

Water management and utilization is an ongoing problem in developing countries with semi-arid to arid climates such as Afghanistan. The lack of effective irrigation systems are oftentimes the most limiting factor for maximizing agricultural productivity in these countries. In Afghanistan, the most widely used irrigation methods are basin/border for cereal crops and furrow for vegetables and gra...

Agricultural irrigation in the middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin consumes approximately 80% of the total river water. Whether the irrigation depth matches the water uptake depth of crops is one of the most important factors affecting the efficiency of irrigation water use. Our results indicated that the influence of plastic film on soil water δ(18)O was restricted to 0-30 cm soil depth. B...

KUSLU, Y., U. SAHIN, T. TUNC and F. M. KIZILOGLU, 2010. Determining water-yield relationship, water use efficiency, seasonal crop and pan coefficients for alfalfa in a semiarid region with high altitude. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 16: 482-492 A field study was conducted to determine effects of seasonal deficit irrigation on plant dry forage yield and water use efficiency of alfalfa for a 2-year peri...

Drought stress (DS) is an important limiting factor for crop growth and production in some regions of the world. Limitation in water availability precludes optimal irrigation in some production regions. Therefore, investigations on the interaction of other factors to mitigate the DS to varying degree are important. Two field experiments were conducted in the experimental farm of the National Re...

Dwindling water resources combined with meeting the demands for food security require maximizing water use efficiency (WUE) both in rainfed and irrigated agriculture. In this regard, deficit irrigation (DI), defined as the administration of water below full crop-water requirements (evapotranspiration), is a valuable practice to contain irrigation water use. In this study, the mechanism of paclo...