ABSTRACT
With water scarcity being prevalent on a wide scale, efficient use of water for agriculture is paramount to sustaining food security and meeting the demands for food, fibre, feed and fuel production. Advanced irrigation technologies and their adoptions, namely the conversion from gravity-flow systems to pressurized irrigation systems (sprinkler and micro-irrigation), have led to decreased water use (Pláyan and Mateos, 2006; NASS, 2013; Tarjuelo et al., 2015). Yet, regulations to increase water conservation from political bodies and competing economic sectors and, in some cases, declining water supplies still loom. Two important technologies to help minimize agricultural water use include deficit irrigation (DI) management and precision irrigation. Both methods entail particular strategies to manage the amount and timing of water applied for sustainable crop production for the present and future. Advancements in technology and irrigation scheduling strategies are key to improved agricultural water use, and simultaneously can help to improve environmental sustainability (Hedley, 2014; Fan and Brzeska, 2016). This chapter describes
the main DI strategies used in agriculture and reports on results from current studies using DI strategies, as well as the status for site-specific irrigation management (SSIM) and its role in minimizing agricultural water use.
