Vinay Nangia

Straw return has been widely used to increase SOC storage globally, but such C accrual is frequently constrained by other nutrients which are needed to maintain soil ecological stoichiometry balance. However, the impact of fertilization on SOC stocks...

The trade-off between yield and environmental effects caused by nitrogen fertilizer application is an important issue in wheat production. A reduction in fertile florets is one of the main reasons for decreased yield under low nitrogen application...

Traditional simulation models are often point based; thus, more research is needed to emphasize spatial simulation, providing decision-makers with fast recommendations. Combining machine learning algorithms with spatial process-based models could be...

urum wheat (Triticum turgidum subsp. durum) is the oldest and most cultivated cereal crop in Middle East and
North Africa (MENA) region and under Mediterranean climatic conditions. Morocco is one of the largest producer of durum wheat in MENA region...

Durum wheat (Triticum turgidum subsp. durum), considered better drought tolerant, is the most cultivated wheat in Morocco and in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The region, including Morocco, predominantly has rainfed production...

To improve the farming efficiency, Egypt has been struggling to narrow the water, energy, and yield gaps owing to exacerbated water shortage. For quantitative diagnosis of farming performance, the paper presented an on-farm water, energy, food, and...

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) plays a crucial role in promoting sustainable farming practices within the challenging climate of the Arabian Peninsula. Traditional CEAs, however, are confronted with excessive water and electricity...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) transformation is susceptible to tillage practices. Conservation tillage is known to optimize soil structure, improve microbial community diversity and increase SOC storage. However, how soil aggregate distribution and...

Background As climate change events become more frequent, drought is an increasing threat to agricultural production and food security. Crop rhizosphere microbiome and root exudates are critical regulators for drought adaptation, yet our...

Owing to the significance of leaf and air temperature differences (ΔT) under arid conditions, this study aimed to prove the proximal thermal imaging concept for irrigation scheduling under controlled irrigation amounts for wheat in Egypt. This led to...

Developing an alternative water-fertilizer-saving management practice for winter wheat-summer maize double cropping system in the North China Plain (NCP) is urgent to address severe water scarcity and adverse environmental impacts. A four-year field...

Biochar amendment can alter native soil organic carbon (SOC) mineralization via the priming effect (PE);
however, its direction, intensity, and controls over a broad geographic scale are not clear, undermining the
predictions of SOC dynamics as...

Background: Clusterbean (Cyamopsis tetragonoloba L.) is important commercial crop which belongs to family Leguminosae and
has capacity to fix the atmospheric nitrogen. The nitrogen fixed by the legume crop is not enough to meet the demand of short...

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a significant consumer of irrigation water and precipitation on
cropland. Global and regional interest in the sustainable management of limited freshwater supplies
to meet the rapidly increasing population and food demands...

Smallholder farmers, who hold 84% of the approximately 570 million farms worldwide, are vital stakeholders in the process of sustainable agricultural intensification, but often lack the capital to invest in sustainable farming practices. Solar...

The microbial priming effect – the decomposition of soil organic carbon (SOC) induced by plant inputs – has long been considered an important driver of SOC dynamics, yet we have limited understanding about the direction, intensitiy, and drivers of...

Nitrogen (N) fertilization plays a pivotal role in physiomorphological attributes and yield formation of field-grown cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.), but little is known of its interaction with irrigation levels. Therefore, this study was conducted...

Cotton yields in Uzbekistan are significantly lower than those in similar agro-climatic regions, requiring the
estimation of crop potential and baseline yield to track progress of production enhancement efforts. The current study
estimated potential...

Agriculture and agri-food systems of the highly vulnerable Middle East and North Africa
(MENA) region needs a radical transformation under a changing climate. Based on a two-year effort,
initially we developed a mega hypothesis on how to achieve...

Fertilized agricultural soils can be a major source of soil nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions to the atmosphere. Conservative soil management may have the ability to reduce N2O emissions through affecting a number of Ncycling-related soil biophysical...

In the arid regions of the world, maintaining economic and efficient crop production has been among
the most critical challenges. In this context, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry
Area (ICARDA) has been leading in research...

In countries facing water scarcity, drip irrigation can raise crop productivity and save water
compared to flood irrigation. In spite of its benefit, the adoption of drip irrigation is still low
mainly due to the high cost of investment and the...

Field experiment was carried out at farmer’s field in pre-bearing orchard of pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) during rabi and kharif season of 2015-16 and 2016-17, respectively in Bikaner district of Rajasthan to study the yield, water productivity...

A field experiment was conducted at research farm, Agricultural Research Sub-Station, Hanumangarh, Swami Keshwanand Rajasthan Agricultural University, Bikaner, Rajasthan during Kharif, 2016 to study the effect of water and nitrogen levels on yield...

This study evaluated the effectiveness of soil and water conservation structures for soil erosion control by applying a semi-distributed Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model in various small watersheds of the Chakwal and Attock districts of...

Precipitation and surface runoff vary strongly in space and time across Morocco. The country’s water management is primarily governed at the basin level, following a decentralized approach. However, in some cases, water is shared between basins...

Farmland surface soil mulching with plastic film is extensively used to enhance agricultural productivity in the Loess Plateau (LP). However, the effect of mulching on the key processes that dominate soil nitrogen dynamics is rarely assessed...

An experiment was conducted at research farm, Agricultural research sub-station, Hanumangarh, a
unit of Swami Keshwanand Rajasthan Agricultural University, Bikaner during Kharif season, 2016 to
study the effect of water and nitrogen application rates...

The intensive winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)–summer maize (Zea mays L.) cropping systems in the North China Plain (NCP) rely on the heavy use of mineral nitrogen (N) fertilizers. As the fertigated area of wheat and maize in the NCP has grown...

Soil salinization affects crop production and food security. Mapping spatial distribution and severity of salinity is essential for agricultural management and development. This study was aimed to test the effectiveness of machine learning algorithms...

Irrigated agriculture is the backbone of Central Asian economies and efficient
irrigation management is of crucial importance to the sustainable crop production. The ET-based irrigation scheduling method has potential to replace subjective daily...

This is the second part of a Special Issue on developments and applications of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) related to agricultural water and nonpoint source pollution management at a watershed scale (see Volk et al., 2016 for part I).

About 41% of the Earth’s land area is classified as dryland wherein the farming system is characterized by approximately 300-500 mm of annual rainfall. The low rainfall, which is not only insufficient but irregular, constitutes a major challenge to...

The choice of an appropriate crop and cropping systems is essential for achieving
higher yield, profit and resource use efficiencies. Yield, returns and water productivity
are important factors for determining suitability of crops and cropping...

The key success factors of the olive oil market are the enhancement and stabilization of olive yields, improvement of olive oil quality and reduction of production costs. There is great potential for cost reduction in terms of water saving in olive...

The study on “Evaluation of Cropsyst model for yield and water productivity of clusterbean” was conducted on farmers
field during kharif 2012 at village Mainawali in Hanumangarh district of Rajasthan. The soils of the area are alluvial and
calcareous...

A twelve-year experiment (1998-2009) was conducted at Tal Amara Research Station in Lebanon to determine the effects of deficit irrigation on yield and water productivity in six annual crops; maize (1998-1999), soybean (2000-2001), cotton (2001- 2002...

Global change and demographic changes increasingly cause water, food, and health problems at many places of the world. In addition, the growth in bioenergy production leads to land-use change and associated environmental impacts. This Special Issue...

Around 80 % of the world’s agricultural land is rainfed, and contributes to at least two-thirds of global food production. About 41 % of the Earth’s land area is classi- fied as dryland (ISPC 2015), wherein the farming system is characterized by...

Agriculture is the largest user of the world's freshwater resources, consuming 70% of the available supply (UNW-DPAC 2011). As the world's population rises and consumes more food, and industries as well as urban developments expand, water scarcity is...

Homs governorate watershed is considered as the agricultural production hub and a strategic water reservoir of Syria. However, land fertility and the increase of population, as well as climatic changes, urged the farmers in this region to intensify...

The Accurate daily reference evapotranspiration (ET) values are needed to estimate crop water demand for
irrigation management and hydrologic modeling purposes. The Bushland Reference ET Calculator (BET) was developed
to implement a user-friendly...

Freshwater used unsustainably in the upper and midmost Orontes basin (from Syrian - Lebanese borders to Rastan dam). In Syria country, water predicted to become scarce by 2020 due to demand continuing to grow in parallel with increased agriculture...

Salinization is a common problem for agriculture in dryland environments and it has greatly affected land productivity
and even caused cropland abandonment in Central and Southern Iraq. Hence it is of pressing importance to
quantify the spatial...

Soil salinity has become one of the major problems affecting crop production and food security in Mesopotamia, Iraq. There is a pressing need to quantify and map the spatial extent and distribution of salinity in the country in order to provide...

Food security concerns and the scarcity of new productive land have put productivity enhancement of degraded lands back
on the political agenda. In such a context, salt-affected lands are a valuable resource that cannot be neglected nor easily...

In a semi-arid environment, the main challenge for crop production is water
limitation in space and in time. Considered as appropriate tools, models are used to
evaluate the effects of water deficit on crop productivity for better irrigation
planning...

Controlled tile drainage can boost crop yields and improve water quality, but it also has the potential to
increase GHG emissions. This study compared in-situ chamber-based measures of soil CH4, N2O, and CO2
fluxes for silt loam soil under corn and...

Soil information is one of the crucial inputs needed to assess the impacts of existing and alternative agricultural man- agement practices on water quality. Therefore, it is important to understand the effects of spatial scale at which soil da-...

Deficit irrigation can be a useful management tool to increase water productivity of forage and sheep
production from pastures in water deprived areas of the world. A three year study compared sheep
production from permanent sown pastures on clay...