Efficient water use to sustain irrigated agriculture: deficite irrigation management of cotton, pistachio and maize

Efficiency in the use of water for irrigation consists of various components and takes into account losses during storage, conveyance and application to irrigation plots. Identifying the verious components and knowing what improvements can be made is essential to making the most effective use of this vital but scarce resource in Turkey's cultivated areas. Enhancements in water use efficiency depend on productivity gains, depicted by consistent increases in outputs per unit inputs and the irrigation techniques. Improved water use efficiency in agriculture is important not only for water conservation, but for obtaining high yields. Modern irrigation technolohies, such as sprinkler and micro irrigation, are high efficient and have the potential to increase yields substantially. Unfortunately, the high costs may prevent small farmers from using the systems. Thus, the use of modern irrigation techniques may be restricted to production of high value crops so that the systems may be financially viable. In this work, it is given some experimental results on water use efficiencny of cotton, orange, lemon, strawberry, watermelon using different irrigation methods in the mediterranean and southeastern regions of turkey.