Effect of Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) and Other Irrigation Management Strategies on Water Resources in Rice-Producing Areas of Northern Italy

In rice areas with shallow aquifers, an evaluation of alternative irrigation strategies should include the interactions between irrigation and groundwater recharge and reuse, which influence the overall irrigation efficiency. A modelling system composed of three sub-models within a MATLAB framework (a physically based, semi-distributed agro-hydrological model and two empirical models, the former for the channel network percolation and the latter for the groundwater level) was applied to a 1000 ha rice district in the Padana Plain, Italy. The calibrated framework estimates the daily time series of the water supply needed and of the groundwater level for a given irrigation management, based on the inputs provided (agro-meteorology, crop data, soil data, irrigation practices, groundwater table depth upstream of the study area). Five irrigation management strategies, relevant to the area, were compared: (i) wet seeding and continuous flooding (WFL), (ii) wet seeding and alternate wetting and drying (AWD), (iii) dry seeding and delayed flooding (DFL), (iv) dry seeding and fixed-turn irrigation FTI), (v) early dry seeding and delayed flooding (DFLearly). Due to economic advantages, dry-seeded techniques (DFL, FTI) are replacing the traditional WFL in northern Italy. Simulations show that dry seeding leads to a drastic decrease of the water table in April/May, reducing the overall irrigation efficiency of the area, and that DFL (widely adopted in the area) also causes a spike in rice irrigation needs in June when other crops increase their water demand, exposing the area to water scarcity. All the cited management strategies are assessed in the paper and AWD turned out to couple smaller irrigation needs (from June onwards) compared to continuous flooding techniques with a maintenance of the groundwater recharge, especially in the first part of the irrigation season, thus being a recommendable rice management alternative for the study area.