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Crop Evapotranspiration, Crop Irrigation and Water Savings
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Crop Evapotranspiration, Crop Irrigation and Water Savings

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Water, Agriculture and Aquaculture".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 July 2025 | Viewed by 2464

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Luis Santos Pereira

grade E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Research Center on Landscape, Environment, Agriculture and Food (LEAF), School of Agriculture (ISA), University of Lisbon, 1649-004 Lisbon, Portugal
Interests: reference and crop evapotranspiration; crop water and irrigation requirements; irrigation management; coping with water scarcity; droughts characterization and management; performance of irrigation methods
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Paula Paredes

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Research Center on Landscape, Environment, Agriculture and Food (LEAF), School of Agriculture (ISA), University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
Interests: crop and reference evapotranspiration; crop water requirements; irrigation management; modelling; water–yield relations; coping with water scarcity
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Evapotranspiration (ET) plays a main role in the water balance at various scales, from the plant and the field to the watershed or the irrigation system. ET allows understanding the hydrological behaviour of natural and cropped ecosystems and adopting improved water resources planning and management. With the increasing competition for water and decreasing water resource availability, the need to cope with water scarcity, droughts and climate change increases the importance of the accurate knowledge and estimation of ET for annual and perennial crops and landscapes. Improved use of ET information allows us to enhance water use performance in agriculture at various scales. Therefore, there is the great need for an accurate scrutiny of the ET measurements, of the weather data collection and of the data processing procedures.

This Special Issue encourages the submission of review and applied research articles that contribute to the accurate measurement and estimation of crop evapotranspiration and transpiration applied to a variety of vegetable and field crops, trees and vines and natural and man-made landscapes. Such knowledge makes it possible to improve crop and irrigation management, support precision agriculture, saving water and environmental protection. Accuracy in data collection and handling is paramount in improving water management and crop yields. Potential topics include a variety of approaches in data collection, evapotranspiration determination and water use issues, as described below.

Prof. Dr. Luis Santos Pereira
Dr. Paula Paredes
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • the use of FAO crop coefficients and transpiration coefficients
  • evapotranspiration, aerodynamic and bulk canopy resistance
  • evapotranspiration, irrigation scheduling and water saving
  • tree evapotranspiration
  • traditional and under-utilized vegetable crops
  • remote sensing and irrigation scheduling
  • crop management for controlling ET and yield
  • precision irrigation
  • irrigation scheduling using crop coefficients from fraction of ground cover and height
  • use of model tools

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 3283 KiB  
Article
Impact of Drip Irrigation Levels on the Growth, Production, and Water Productivity of Quinoa Grown in Arid Climate Conditions
by Mukeran Awa, Aisanjiang Yusuying, Jinghua Zhao and Hudan Tumaerbai
Water 2025, 17(7), 917; https://doi.org/10.3390/w17070917 - 21 Mar 2025
Viewed by 345
Abstract
Globally, water scarcity demands immediate attention, particularly in arid regions like Northwest China, necessitating efficient water use strategies in crop cultivation. Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.), celebrated for both its drought tolerance and nutritional value, has consequently emerged as a central focus in [...] Read more.
Globally, water scarcity demands immediate attention, particularly in arid regions like Northwest China, necessitating efficient water use strategies in crop cultivation. Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.), celebrated for both its drought tolerance and nutritional value, has consequently emerged as a central focus in contemporary agricultural research seeking solutions to this challenge. To explore the effects of different irrigation amounts on quinoa yield and water productivity, a mulched drip irrigation technique was applied in community trials of quinoa in Mulei County in 2020 and in Bole City in 2021. The “JL-1” quinoa variety was used as the experimental material, and four irrigation levels were set (255 mm, 292 mm, 330 mm, and 367 mm). This study examined the impact of varying irrigation amounts on quinoa growth indicators, like plant height, stem diameter, leaf area index, aboveground biomass, and yield, and analyzed water productivity. The results from two years of trials indicated that different irrigation gradients had significant or extremely significant effects on quinoa growth indicators. The maximum values of growth indicators were achieved under the highest irrigation level of the control treatment. Water production rates in the 2020 trial in Mulei were highest at an irrigation amount of 330 mm, while in the 2021 trial in Bole, the highest water production rate was observed at 292 mm. Across the two years of trials, when the irrigation amounts were the same prior to the heading stage, the differences among all treatments were not significant, whereas varying irrigation gradients had a significant impact on growth after the heading stage. Furthermore, the growing environment significantly affected the quinoa yield; in the Bole trial, strong winds in the mid-growth period led to severe lodging of quinoa. The findings suggest that managing irrigation amounts, specifically by appropriately increasing irrigation during the water-sensitive stage of quinoa (from heading to grain filling) and reducing water during the early growth stage, can control the growth in quinoa height, thereby improving yield while conserving water resources. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Crop Evapotranspiration, Crop Irrigation and Water Savings)
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20 pages, 3500 KiB  
Article
A Validation of FruitLook Data Using Eddy Covariance in a Fully Mature and High-Density Japanese Plum Orchard in the Western Cape, South Africa
by Munashe Mashabatu, Nonofo Motsei, Nebojsa Jovanovic and Luxon Nhamo
Water 2025, 17(3), 324; https://doi.org/10.3390/w17030324 - 23 Jan 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 810
Abstract
The cultivation of Japanese plums (Prunus salicina Lindl.) in South Africa has increased over the years, yet their water use is unknown. Their cultivation in the Western Cape Province of South Africa is highly dependent on supplementary irrigation, indicating their high water [...] Read more.
The cultivation of Japanese plums (Prunus salicina Lindl.) in South Africa has increased over the years, yet their water use is unknown. Their cultivation in the Western Cape Province of South Africa is highly dependent on supplementary irrigation, indicating their high water use demand. This study used remote sensing techniques to estimate the actual evapotranspiration (ETc act) of the Japanese plums to assess their water use on a large scale. The accuracy of the procedure had to be validated before getting to tangible conclusions. The eddy covariance was used to measure ETc act in an African Delight plum orchard to validate the FruitLook remote sensing data for the 2023–2024 hydrological year and irrigation season. The seasonal and annual plum crop water requirements measured using the eddy covariance system were 751 and 996 mm, while those estimated by FruitLook were 744 and 948 mm, respectively. Although FruitLook slightly underestimated plum ETc act by a Pbias of −6.15%, it performed well with a Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of 0.91. FruitLook underestimated evapotranspiration mainly during the peak summer season with full vegetation cover when the model may inaccurately represent irrigation impacts, soil moisture availability, and localized advection effects, better captured by the eddy covariance system. Based on the results, FruitLook proved to be sufficiently accurate for large-scale applications to estimate evapotranspiration in Japanese plum orchards in the Western Cape. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Crop Evapotranspiration, Crop Irrigation and Water Savings)
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22 pages, 17093 KiB  
Article
Seasonal Variations in Water Use of Japanese Plum Orchards Under Micro-Sprinkler and Drip Irrigation Methods Using FruitLook Data
by Munashe Mashabatu, Nonofo Motsei, Nebojsa Jovanovic and Luxon Nhamo
Water 2025, 17(3), 300; https://doi.org/10.3390/w17030300 - 22 Jan 2025
Viewed by 677
Abstract
South Africa is considered one of the driest countries, and its water insecurity challenges are exacerbated by climate change and variability, depletion, and degradation, among other factors. The challenges of water insecurity are exacerbated by some of the introduced crops, like the Japanese [...] Read more.
South Africa is considered one of the driest countries, and its water insecurity challenges are exacerbated by climate change and variability, depletion, and degradation, among other factors. The challenges of water insecurity are exacerbated by some of the introduced crops, like the Japanese plums (Prunus salicina Lindl.) grown in South Africa, as they consume a lot of water. The Japanese plums are grown under irrigation to supplement low and erratic rainfall in the country. There is little information on the water requirements of Japanese plums (particularly in water-scarce regions), a gap addressed by this study. Therefore, the study aims to quantify and compare the seasonal water use of high-performing, full-bearing Japanese plum orchards under drip and micro-sprinkler irrigation in the Western Cape Province, using readily available satellite data from the FruitLook platform. The seasonal water use volumes of selected plum orchards were compared at provincial and farm scales. At a provincial scale, micro-sprinkler-irrigated orchards consumed significantly more water (up to 19%) than drip-irrigated orchards, whilst drip-irrigated orchards experienced an average 38% greater water deficit. Results were more variable at the farm scale, which was attributed to the influence of site-specific soil, climate, and crop conditions on the performance of the irrigation methods. Therefore, a blanket approach cannot be used when selecting an irrigation method and design. Instead, a case-by-case approach is recommended, which takes into account the root distribution, soil texture, and planting density, among other factors. The generated knowledge facilitates allocating and licensing water resources, developing accurate irrigation scheduling, and promoting improved water use efficiency. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Crop Evapotranspiration, Crop Irrigation and Water Savings)
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