Water and Agricultural Sustainability Strategies

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.