Synopses & Reviews
While enhancing water-use efficiency (WUE) is a major goal in irrigated agriculture, drought management is the principal strategy to enhance production from rainfed agriculture. Management, conservation, and recycling are crucial to sustainable use of water resources in both irrigated and rainfed agriculture. The challenge of enhancing WUE is moreover confounded by the severe problem of water quality either because of high concentration of naturally occurring salts in the aquifer or due to pollution and contamination by urban, industrial, and other anthropogenic activities.
This book covers the following aspects related to water management:
- 1. Use of water management strategies to achieve agricultural sustainability under the current scenario of water scarcity;
- 2. Use of the four kinds of natural waters, i.e., rainwater, surface water, groundwater, and soil moisture (soil water) as well as irrigation drain water, municipal and industrial wastewater, to promote agricultural sustainability. How irrigation with groundwater polluted with arsenic and industrial water could lead to toxicity in crops, and how to avoid/prevent/phytoremediate this;
- 3. Water management in different agroclimatic environments, with particular reference to dryland/rainfed agriculture;
- 4. Biotechnological applications to develop crop varieties and agronomic practices that endow crops with drought tolerance and greater water-use efficiency.
Intended for agricultural scientists, as well as graduate students in agronomy, soil science, agricultural engineering, and plant breeding/genetics/biotechnology.
Synopsis
According to the United Nations, 77 million people are expected to face water shortage by 2025, if people continue to use water at the current rate. More water than available would be needed to grow the world's food during the next decade. As a result of scarcity of water, global annual food production losses could reach 350 million tons by 2025.
Divided into six main sections, this volume outlines strategies to conserve soil and water resources to help ensure both water and food security:
- Challenges to ensure water and agricultural sustainability
- Sustainable strategies for managing water and soil resources and groundwater recharge technologies
- Soil-quality issues
- Water-quality issues, with special reference to groundwater pollution with arsenic
- Management in different agroclimatic environments, with particular reference to rainfed agriculture
- Biotechnological applications for drought-tolerant crop varieties with improved water use efficiency, water conservation strategies, and sustainable agronomic alternatives.
This guide on agricultural sustainability is intended for scientists and advanced students in agronomy, soil science, agricultural engineering, agricultural economics, plant breeding, plant genetics, plant biotechnology, water resources, hydrology, geography, and other agriculture-related fields.