Soil Water Conditions and Crop Production

Dear Colleagues,

Water is essential for photosynthesis, nutrient transport, and turgidity of plants, and soil serves as the principal water reservoir for plants. Effective water management for crop production requires profound understanding of the relationship between the soil’s water storage and supply characteristics, the crop’s water demand, and the environmental processes that interfere with supply and demand. Maintaining an optimum soil water level is key to biomass production and yield, and farmers fear nothing more than the absence of water to tend their crops. While changing site conditions (soil texture, relief, weather) often require radical interventions, farmers usually have simpler opportunities to optimise crop water supply through a range of management options. When the natural water supply to the root-zone of a crop by rainfall or capillary rise from ground water is limited, irrigation is applied from surface or groundwater resources. For those who have no water or technology available to irrigate, crop rotation, sowing schedules, soil tillage, and plant residue management provide additional options to reduce unproductive losses of water. In some regions, climate change is expected to reduce water availability in the crop growing season, because of changing rainfall patterns and increasing evapotranspiration. Agriculture already consumes 70% of the world’s freshwater resources. Therefore, increasing the efficiency of water use in crop production requires attention, and various approaches at different levels of technology are currently emerging. Sensor-based irrigation control and on-farm application design aim at high-technology farming, while water harvesting methods try to increase the availability of water where it is scarce. Understanding crop response to different levels of soil moisture is critical for increasing crop-water productivity.

This Special Issue on “Soil Water Conditions and Crop Production” aims at bringing together current research results on factors affecting soil water condition, soil water and crop production interaction, and crop management that enhances productivity in irrigated and dryland/rainfed crop production systems using lab-based, glass-house or field experiments, simulation modelling, and sensor-based technologies.

Dr. Ketema Zeleke
Prof. Dr. Claas Nendel
Guest Editors

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• agronomic management
• climate change
• crop water productivity
• deficit irrigation
• drought
• evapotranspiration
• irrigation scheduling
• modelling
• root water uptake
• sensors
• soil water conservation
• soil water content
• soil water potential
• yield gap