Assessment of wheat and maize water productivities and production function for cropping system decisions in arid and semiarid regions

Abstract

The great challenge of the agricultural sector in countries located in arid and semiarid regions faced with severe water scarcity is to produce more food from less water. This may be achieved by increasing the crop water productivity (WP). Based on experiments conducted in different regions of Iran, it was found that the range of wheat WP was greater than that reported earlier by the FAO. The maize WP was high in the northwestern regions of Iran and less in the southwest. The wide ranges of WP (0.5-1.8 kg m À3 for wheat and 0.3-2.3 kg m À3 for maize) indicate tremendous opportunities for increasing agricultural production with less water. The variability of crop WP can be ascribed to climate, cropping calendar, soil characteristics, and irrigation water management. Wheat and maize WP of 1.5 and 1.7 kg m À3 were recommended as an optimum level to be considered in the cropping system of potential regions. Irrigation water applied for an optimum level of wheat and maize WP was about 2650 and 5900 m 3 ha À1 , respectively. The maximum wheat WP occurred under deficit irrigation, while for maize it was measured under full irrigation. Regions with higher annual rainfall and high silt content in soil were more productive under deficit irrigation management. Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.key words: crop water productivity; crop water production function; wheat; maize; deficit irrigation

Effects of Irrigation Volume and Saline Water On Maize Yield and Soil in Southern Italy

“…The association of high or moderate WP irrig values with high or moderate yields has important implications for achieving efficient use of water for crop management in water‐scarce areas (Oweis and Hachum, ). In this study, the WP irrig values were higher than those reported for maize by other authors (Igbadun et al , ; Dehghanisanij et al , ; Qureshi et al , ). Since WP irrig expresses the unit increment in yield per unit of applied irrigation water, it is a useful indicator for assessing the impact of an irrigation scheduling practice on crop yield.…”

A Plant-based Approach to Deficit Irrigation in Trees and Vines

“…6). If other physiological responses of almonds to water availability have a similar shape to that found for g S , then large productivity gains might be found with increases in irrigation rather than a linear relation (e.g., Dehghanisanij et al, 2009). It is particularly interesting to note that both rain-fed and irrigated trees had similar levels of g S for the same level of SWP, indicating that growth under rain-fed conditions Fig.…”

Modeling malt barley water use and evapotranspiration partitioning in two contrasting rainfall years. Assessing AquaCrop and SIMDualKc models

“…Studies applying the Stewarts' water-yield approach to barley were not found in literature but various studies are available for spring wheat, which yield responses to water differ little from those of spring barley (Albrizio et al, 2010). Based upon a literature review (Doorenbos and Kassam, 1979;Dehghanisanij et al, 2009;Li et al, 2011;Steduto et al, 2012) and analysis of observed data, the value K y = 1.25 was adopted.…”