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 hydroclimatic 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. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Stochastic soil water balance; Irrigation; Crop yield; Profitability; Sustainability; Rainfall variability

Published in

Advances in Water Resources
2011, Volume: 34, number: 2, pages: 272-281
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCI LTD

UKÄ Subject classification

Oceanography, Hydrology, Water Resources
Economics
Agricultural Science


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2010.11.011

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/44330