Water savings and water use efficiency: what is required beyond regulated deficit irrigation

Crop responses to water stress have been extensively studied and new remote and on-the-ground sensors have been also recently developed in order to robustly determining plant water status for a precision, on-farm, deficit irrigation scheduling.
Nowadays, some research is also in due course to develop the so-called precision irrigation, which intends to consider the variability in water needs within a farm attempting to adjust irrigation scheduling to the existing plant and soil variations within a field.
This is still difficult to be properly implemented particularly under drip irrigation, but some advances will be summarized.
All these capabilities potentially allow farmers to be very efficient in their irrigation practices.
While all these efforts are definitively required, the challenge of water conservation, at a whole water basin, still requires to further tailor a precision deficit irrigation scheduling program with tools that could contribute to reduce the current pressure on the scarce available resources.
Agronomic practices that could allow obtaining consumptive water savings are summarized and finally some suggestions on how to integrate all this gained knowledge for an integrated water management have been reviewed.
Indeed, particularly when water available for agriculture is scarce, researchers and practitioners should go beyond deficit irrigation scheduling, attempting to connect with land/water basin authorities to jointly develop a general plan for soil and water conservation to ensure a long-term sustainable irrigated agriculture.

XI International Symposium on Irrigation of Horticultural Crops

D.S. Intrigliolo

crop water requirements, crop water status, sensors, water potential

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2026.1468.8