SSl2 Challenges and current trends in agricultural research for improving water use and management in cropping systems (Part 2)

Organised by: Agropolis Foundation for agronomy and sustainable development, France

Coordinator: Marc Voltz (e-mail: voltz@supagro.inra.fr), T. Simonneau, J. Wery

Given the expected increase in world population and the current lack of food in many regions of the world, food security is already and will be even more a major issue. Food production heavily depends on the availability of water resources for agriculture. As a consequence, the major part, up to 70 %, of the economically usable water supply” (e.g. World Water Vision report, p 17, Box. 2.6, ref. Cosgrove and Rijsberman, 2000), also called blue water flow by Falkenmark (1995), is used for crop irrigation. In this context, agricultural research has to face two main challenges. One is to improve the water productivity ratio of crops either by improving genetic resources or by improving the cropping systems. The other is to increase water harvesting for agricultural use, which can be reasoned at the field, catchment and farm scales. This special session aims both to provide an overview of the most advanced research programs in agricultural sciences that attempt to answer the previous issues and to stimulate discussion on the most promising perspectives. The research topics that will be addressed concern plant breeding , cropping system innovation and land management optimization.

This is the second part of the session SSl1 Challenges and current trends in agricultural research for improving water use and management in cropping systems. For a complete description of the session please click here

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