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Agronomic Crops pp 13–29Cite as

Improving Water Use Efficiency in Agronomic Crop Production

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Abstract

Food and agriculture are the largest consumers of water, requiring one hundred times more than we use for personal needs. Agricultural water is used to grow fresh produce and sustain livestock. Agriculture is expected to face increasing water risks that will impact production, markets, trade, and food security – risks that can be mitigated with targeted policy. Water resource management is the activity of planning, developing, distributing, and managing the optimum use of water resources. Water use efficiency (WUE) refers to the ratio of water used in plant metabolism to water lost by the plant transpiration. WUE can also be improved through different methods such as irrigation scheduling and on-farm water management. Irrigation scheduling is the decision of when and how much water to apply to a field. Its purpose is to maximize irrigation efficiencies by applying the exact amount of water needed to replenish the soil moisture to the desired level. It enables the farmers to schedule water rotation among the various fields to minimize crop water stress and maximize yields. It reduces the farmer’s cost of water and labor through less irrigation, thereby making maximum use of soil moisture storage. This chapter reviews the main linkages between climate change, water, and agriculture as a means to identifying and discussing adaptation strategies for better use and conservation of water resources.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Sciences, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Vehari, Pakistan

    Syed Ahsan Zahoor, Muhammad Mubeen, Sajjad Hussain, Muhammad Sami Ul Din & Wajid Nasim

  2. Department of Agronomy, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan

    Shakeel Ahmad

  3. Program Chair, Climate Change, US.-Pakistan Centre for Advanced Studies in Agriculture and Food Security, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan

    Ashfaq Ahmad

  4. Department of Agronomy, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan

    Ashfaq Ahmad & Tasneem Khaliq

  5. Agro-Climatology Lab, Department of Agronomy, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan

    Aftab Wajid

  6. Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI), The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Asad Amin

  7. Department of Agronomy, The Islamia University, Bahawalpur, Pakistan

    Muhammad Awais

Authors
  1. Syed Ahsan Zahoor
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  2. Shakeel Ahmad
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  3. Ashfaq Ahmad
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  4. Aftab Wajid
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  5. Tasneem Khaliq
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  6. Muhammad Mubeen
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  7. Sajjad Hussain
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  8. Muhammad Sami Ul Din
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  9. Asad Amin
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  10. Muhammad Awais
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  11. Wajid Nasim
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shakeel Ahmad .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agriculture, Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, Bangladesh

    Mirza Hasanuzzaman

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Zahoor, S.A. et al. (2019). Improving Water Use Efficiency in Agronomic Crop Production. In: Hasanuzzaman, M. (eds) Agronomic Crops. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9783-8_2

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