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From rainfed agriculture to stress-avoidance irrigation: II. Sustainability, crop yield, and profitability
- Source :
-
Advances in Water Resources . Feb2011, Vol. 34 Issue 2, p272-281. 10p. - Publication Year :
- 2011
-
Abstract
- Abstract: The optimality of irrigation strategies may be sought with respect to a number of criteria, including water requirements, crop yield, and profitability. To explore the suitability of different demand-based irrigation strategies, we link the probabilistic description of irrigation requirements under stochastic hydro-climatic conditions, provided in a companion paper [Vico G, Porporato A. From rainfed agriculture to stress-avoidance irrigation: I. A generalized irrigation scheme with stochastic soil moisture. Adv Water Resour 2011;34(2):263–71], to crop-yield and economic analyses. Water requirements, application efficiency, and investment costs of different irrigation methods, such as surface, sprinkler and drip irrigation systems, are described via a unified conceptual and theoretical approach, which includes rainfed agriculture and stress-avoidance irrigation as extreme cases. This allows us to analyze irrigation strategies with respect to sustainability, productivity, and economic return, using the same framework, and quantify them as a function of climate, crop, and soil parameters. We apply our results to corn (Zea mays), a food staple and biofuel source, which is currently mainly irrigated through surface systems. As our analysis shows, micro-irrigation maximizes water productivity, but more traditional solutions may be more profitable at least in some contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 03091708
- Volume :
- 34
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Advances in Water Resources
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 57518070
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2010.11.011