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Subsurface Drainage and Water-Saving Irrigation in Sustainable Agriculture
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Subsurface Drainage and Water-Saving Irrigation in Sustainable Agriculture

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Water Use and Scarcity".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 January 2021) | Viewed by 18421

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Haruyuki Fujimaki

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Arid Land Research Center, Tottori University, Tottori, Japan
Interests: irrigation; drainage; salinity; water-harvesting

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Salinity is a major threat for the sustainability of irrigated agriculture in drylands. To control salinity in the root zone for better crop growth, more water than required to meet crop evapotranspiration must be applied to leach excessive soluble salts out. Such an intentional “over-irrigation” is called leaching, which is the primary measure and is widely practiced as the most effective method. By carrying out leaching, salinity in the root zone can be controlled at least tentatively, but drainage below the root zone is inevitable and if subsurface drainage or groundwater discharge of the land is poor, the ground water table will rise and salts may return to the soil surface by rapid and continuous evaporation from the wet soil surface. In addition, plants will suffer from a lack of oxygen in soil pores. Therefore, securing subsurface drainage must be accompanied with irrigation in drylands. Unfortunately, the artificial enhancement of subsurface drainage is usually expensive. Even if tile drain has been already installed in the past, maintenance costs can be a heavy burden for farmers.

Herein, we call for manuscripts (original research, reviews, short communications, letters to the editor, and discussions) for reporting or reviewing such drainage problems or evaluating the effect of new subsurface drainage systems, such as low-cost alternatives to tile drainage systems, deep plowing, or optimization of the design of tile drainage systems either experimentally or numerically. Reducing unnecessary drainage caused by over-irrigation or non-uniformity in irrigation would be one of the solutions which may reduce the cost for installing or maintaining the subsurface drainage system. Therefore, articles for new methods to enhance uniformity in application or minimize over-irrigation by precisely meeting crop evapotranspiration demands and leaching requirements are also welcome.

Prof. Dr. Haruyuki Fujimaki
Guest Editor

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

  • subsurface drainage
  • salinity stress
  • waterlogging
  • water-saving irrigation

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Editorial

Jump to: Research, Review

2 pages, 144 KiB  
Editorial
Subsurface Drainage and Water-Saving Irrigation in Sustainable Agriculture
by Haruyuki Fujimaki
Water 2021, 13(10), 1332; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13101332 - 11 May 2021
Viewed by 2006
Abstract
Salinity is a major threat for the sustainability of irrigated agriculture in drylands [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Subsurface Drainage and Water-Saving Irrigation in Sustainable Agriculture)

Research

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11 pages, 4654 KiB  
Article
Effect of Bypass-Flow on Leaching of Salts in a Cracking Soil in the Nile Delta
by Haruyuki Fujimaki and Hassan Mohamed Fahmy Abd El Baki
Water 2021, 13(7), 993; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13070993 - 04 Apr 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2243
Abstract
Salinity is a major threat to the sustainability of irrigated agriculture in arid and semi-arid regions. Leaching is the primary measure for removing excess salts from the root zone, but not all water applied to the soil surface contributes to the removal of [...] Read more.
Salinity is a major threat to the sustainability of irrigated agriculture in arid and semi-arid regions. Leaching is the primary measure for removing excess salts from the root zone, but not all water applied to the soil surface contributes to the removal of salts. In clayey soils, bypass flow along cracks can occur without being mixed with saline pore water in the matrix. To present a field dataset to quantitatively evaluate the contribution of bypass flow to the leaching of salts, soil sampling and monitoring of groundwater and discharge from a tile drain were carried out in farmland having a cracking soil in the Nile Delta. The electrical conductivities of 1:2 extracts were measured to evaluate the salinity of the soil. The first evidence for the occurrence of significant bypass flow through cracks was the salinity of the pore water, which was nearly triple that of the shallow groundwater and outflow from drainage. Second, the difference in root zone salinity before and after paddy rice cultivation was not significant. Third, the gradient of the groundwater table was very small. in spite of the low saturated hydraulic conductivity. Fourth, the salinity of the outflow from the tile drain dropped just after irrigation or rain. These results indicated that bypass flow through cracks played a significant role in the drainage process in the soil, and that nearly half of the water bypasses through cracks in the field with a cracking soil. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Subsurface Drainage and Water-Saving Irrigation in Sustainable Agriculture)
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16 pages, 2921 KiB  
Article
Water and Salt Balance in Agricultural Lands under Leaching with Shallow Subsurface Drainage Used in Combination with Cut-Drains
by Yukio Okuda, Junya Onishi, Yulia I. Shirokova, Iwao Kitagawa, Yoshinobu Kitamura and Haruyuki Fujimaki
Water 2020, 12(11), 3207; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12113207 - 16 Nov 2020
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2399
Abstract
Secondary salinization of irrigated lands in drylands is often caused by rising groundwater levels. Open drainage is widely employed to control groundwater. However, salinity levels tend to remain high under malfunctioning drainage conditions. Shallow subsurface drainage may be a possible solution to prevent [...] Read more.
Secondary salinization of irrigated lands in drylands is often caused by rising groundwater levels. Open drainage is widely employed to control groundwater. However, salinity levels tend to remain high under malfunctioning drainage conditions. Shallow subsurface drainage may be a possible solution to prevent salt accumulation, although it is difficult for farmers to apply conventional tile drainage systems owing to construction costs. In this regard, we proposed a low-cost shallow subsurface drainage system used in combination with a new mole-drain drilling technology (cut-drain) developed in Japan, whose drainage capacity is similar to tile drain. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of the proposed system. The system was installed in a farmland, Uzbekistan. The experimental field was set with/without the system to observe the differences in the balance of water and salt. The results revealed that the remaining infiltrated water in the field decreased by approximately 26% and the removed net mass of salt was 14 Mg ha−1. The direction of salt movement changed from the deeper zone or surrounding field to the open drainage. Therefore, the proposed system can enhance salt removal from fields. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Subsurface Drainage and Water-Saving Irrigation in Sustainable Agriculture)
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14 pages, 4026 KiB  
Article
Effects of Alternating Fresh and Saline Water Irrigation on Soil Salinity and Chlorophyll Fluorescence of Summer Maize
by Honghui Sang, Weihua Guo, Yun Gao, Xiyun Jiao and Xiaobao Pan
Water 2020, 12(11), 3054; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12113054 - 30 Oct 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2031
Abstract
Saline groundwater irrigation is an important way to alleviate the shortage of fresh water resources. In order to find a reasonable saline irrigation method for farmland, an irrigation experiment was conducted with fresh water and saline water at the seedling, jointing, heading, and [...] Read more.
Saline groundwater irrigation is an important way to alleviate the shortage of fresh water resources. In order to find a reasonable saline irrigation method for farmland, an irrigation experiment was conducted with fresh water and saline water at the seedling, jointing, heading, and filling stages. The soil salinity, growth, chlorophyll fluorescence, and yield of summer maize were measured. The results showed that alternating fresh and saline water irrigation led to a smaller increase in soil salinity relative to that irrigation with saline water alone. In addition, different sequences of alternating irrigation also significantly affected the accumulation of soil salinity. The maximum quantum yield, effective quantum yield of photochemical energy conversion, photochemical quenching, and non-photochemical quenching varied greatly at the jointing stage and heading stage. Furthermore, the yield of maize that was irrigated with fresh water at the heading stage (8.53 t ha−1) was greater than that at the jointing (7.69 t ha−1) and filling stages (7.45 t ha−1). Therefore, these findings indicate that in areas where fresh water is scarce, priority should be given to the application of fresh water at the heading stages for summer maize irrigation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Subsurface Drainage and Water-Saving Irrigation in Sustainable Agriculture)
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14 pages, 1832 KiB  
Article
Optimization of Irrigation and Leaching Depths Considering the Cost of Water Using WASH_1D/2D Models
by Haruyuki Fujimaki, Hassan M. Abd El Baki, Seyed Mohamad Mahdavi and Hamed Ebrahimian
Water 2020, 12(9), 2549; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12092549 - 12 Sep 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2508
Abstract
Optimization of water use with consideration of salinity control is a crucial task for crop production. A new scheme, “optimized irrigation”, was recently presented to determine irrigation depth using WASH_1D/2D which are numerical simulation models of water flow and solute transport in soils [...] Read more.
Optimization of water use with consideration of salinity control is a crucial task for crop production. A new scheme, “optimized irrigation”, was recently presented to determine irrigation depth using WASH_1D/2D which are numerical simulation models of water flow and solute transport in soils and crop growth. In the scheme, irrigation depth is determined such that net income is maximized considering the price of water and weather forecasts. To evaluate whether the optimized irrigation is also able to restrict salinity stress and avoid salinization without any intentional leaching, we carried out a numerical experiment for winter wheat grown in northern Sudan under the following scenarios: (1) Available water in the root zone is refilled using freshwater (0.17 g/L of NaCl) at every five days; (2) available water in the root zone is refilled using saline water (1.7 g/L) at every five days; (3) optimized irrigation using fresh water at 7-days interval; (4) optimized irrigation on a weekly basis using saline water; and (5) same as scenario 2, except for leaching is carried out at the middle of the growing season and leaching depth is optimized such that net income is maximized. The results showed that the optimized irrigation scheme automatically instructs additional water required for leaching at each irrigation event and maximizes the net income even under saline conditions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Subsurface Drainage and Water-Saving Irrigation in Sustainable Agriculture)
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Review

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27 pages, 10986 KiB  
Review
Evolution of the Materials and Methods Used for Subsurface Drainage of Agricultural Lands from Antiquity to the Present
by Stavros I. Yannopoulos, Mark E. Grismer, Khaled M. Bali and Andreas N. Angelakis
Water 2020, 12(6), 1767; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12061767 - 21 Jun 2020
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 6380
Abstract
Agricultural drainage plays an important role worldwide in food production and conservation of soil resources, while safeguarding investments in agricultural production and irrigation projects. It can improve crop yields and land productivity, especially on poorly drained soils and in cases of prolonged waterlogging. [...] Read more.
Agricultural drainage plays an important role worldwide in food production and conservation of soil resources, while safeguarding investments in agricultural production and irrigation projects. It can improve crop yields and land productivity, especially on poorly drained soils and in cases of prolonged waterlogging. Both the subsurface drainage materials and the installation techniques used have a long history dating to prehistoric times. Over time, new subsurface drainage materials, installation techniques and modernized equipment were being developed continuously to take advantage of technological advances provided through research and development, while the planning and organization of the implementation process were improved. Today’s new materials and improved installation methods can offer solutions to problems still unsolved, while sometimes creating new ones. This paper considers the evolution of basic subsurface drainage materials and their installation techniques as they developed and adapted over time as well as possible future trends in drainage system design and application. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Subsurface Drainage and Water-Saving Irrigation in Sustainable Agriculture)
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