More Rice, Less Water—Integrated Approaches for Increasing Water Productivity in Irrigated Rice-Based Systems in Asia

By T. P. Tuong, M. Mortimer. 2005

465 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The water crisis is threatening the sustainability of the irrigated rice system and food security in Asia. Our challenge is to develop novel technologies and production systems that allow rice production to be maintained or increased in the face of declining water availability. This paper introduces principles that govern technologies and systems for reducing water inputs and increasing water productivity, and assesses the opportunities of such technologies and systems at spatial scale levels from plant to field, to irrigation system, and to agro-ecological zones. We concluded that, while increasing the productivity of irrigated rice with transpired water may require breakthroughs in breeding, many technologies can reduce water inputs at the field level and increase field-level water productivity with respect to irrigation and total water inputs. Most of them, however, come at the cost of decreased yield. More rice with less water can only be achieved when water management is integrated with (i) germplasm selection and other crop and resource management practices to increase yield, and (ii) system-level management such that the water saved at the field level is used more effectively to irrigate previously un-irrigated or low-productivity lands. The amount of water that can be saved at the system level could be far less than assumed from computations of field-level water savings because there is already a high degree of recycling and conjunctive use of water in many rice areas. The impact of reducing water inputs for rice production on weeds, nutrients, sustainability, and environmental services of rice ecosystems warrants further investigation.

Subfields: Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/21432e515dd0ea7c022c463f757b356e5678153a

How researchers see this paper

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In Plant Science

1. Jianchang Yang
2. Lijun Liu
3. A. Wahid
4. Hao Zhang
5. S. M. A. Basra
6. K. Giller
7. A. Thakur
8. Zhiqin Wang

Citations in the corpus

• Strategies for producing more rice with less water. (2009, background): “Rice is very sensitive to water stress and attempts to reduce water inputs may tax true yield potential (Tuong et al., 2004).”
• Progressive integrative crop managements increase grain yield, nitrogen use efficiency and irrigation water productivity in rice (2018, methodology): “Rice is also the greatest consumer of water among all crops and consumes approximately 80% of the total irrigated fresh water resources in Asia (Tuong et al., 2005).”
• Effects on rice plant morphology and physiology of water and associated management practices of the system of rice intensification and their implications for crop performance (2011, background): “…compared with continuously submerged conditions, AWD can maintain or even increase grain yield because of the enhancement in root growth, grain-filling rate, and remobilization of carbon reserves from vegetative tissues to grains (Tuong et al. 2005; Yang et al. 2007; Zhang et al. 2008a, 2009a).”
• Modified rice cultivation in Tamil Nadu, India: Yield gains and farmers' (lack of) acceptance (2008, background): “, 2006), though it can be expressed in different ways (Tuong et al., 2005; Tsubo et al., 2006; Bouman et al., 2007a).”