[ Drought conditions and management strategies in the Philippines ]
Practices to alleviate drought impacts:
> Promotion of water saving technologies (WST) in Irrigated Rice P roduction System. ________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ [ Field water management to save water and increase its productivity in irrigate d lowland rice ] - "Total rice production can then only be maintained, or increased, by using th e water thus saved to irrigate other previously unirrigated lands." Objectives > Through reviewing literature and analyzing published data, thi s study investigates how water-saving irrigation techniques at the field level can cont ribute to meet the three challenges facing rice producers as formulated above. The main aim is to establish generalizations from a large number of reported experiments. D etails of individual cases are only given to illustrate typical results or deviations fro m general findings. First, the effects of drought on growth and yield of rice that might be i ncurred by water-saving irrigation are investigated. Next, relationships between water savings and yield reductions are quantified. Then, water productivities of rice are quantif ied, and production functions between water input and rice yield are investigated. Abstract > Water-saving irrigation increases water productivity, up to a maximum of about 1.9 g grain per kg water, but decreases yield. It therefore does not produce more rice with less water on the same field. Field-level water productivity and yield can only be increased concomitantly by improving total factor productivity or by raising the yield potential. Total rice production can b e increased by using water saved in one location to irrigate new land in another. If this is not done, a strategy of saving water at the eld level potentially threatens total rice production at large. Introduction > Because of the combined increasing demand for food with the in creasing scarcity of water, rice producers face three major challenges: (1) to save water; (2) to increase water productivity (i.e. grain yield over wate r input, in g grain per kg water) and (3) to produce more rice with less water. As will be shown in this study, these three challenges are not the same (though they overlap). > Recently, the term `water-saving irrigation techniques' has be en introduced (Guerra et al., 1998) to denominate irrigation strategies that aim at reducing SP rates by (i) reducing the depth of ponded water; (ii) keeping the soil just saturated or
(iii) alternate wetting/drying, i.e. allowing the soil to dry
out to a certain extent before re-applying irrigation water. Water-saving irrigation techniques, however, run the risk of y ield reduction because of possible drought-stress effects on the crop Methods and Materials > The experiments and treatments were divided into two groups: o ne aimed at the study of drought effects on rice (experiments 1, 2, 47, 9, 1618, 25, 2 6, 31) henceforward called the `drought experiments', and a second one aimed at wa ter savings and their effects of rice yield (experiments 24, 8, 1015, 17, 19, 2031) hen ceforward called the `water saving experiments'. All experiments used transplanted rice, except for nos. 7, 12, and 20, which used direct-seeded rice, and nos. 15, 17 and 19, which used both. Data analysis and terminology > Since the experiments span a wide range of conditions, yield l evels and water inputs are not comparable. Therefore, relative yields and rela tive water inputs were calculated by normalizing the yields/water inputs obtained in the drought or water-saving treatments to the yield/water inputs obtained in the reference treatments (in percent). The reference treatment consisted of continuously ponded water of 510 cm depth, which is generally considered as the optimum depth for rice growth (De Datta, 1981; Anbumozhi et al., 1998). Conclusion and discussion > For the three challenges facing rice production mentioned in S ection 1, water-saving irrigation techniques have the following potential. 1. They can substantially reduce water input at the eld l evel (as their name implies). A risk of unintended extra water input, however, exists in heavy (clayey) soils because percolation rates may increase with drying of the soi l or because of the development of cracks that allow for rapid bypass ow. 2. They increase eld-level water productivity. In heavy s oils, however, water productivity may decrease when water input unintentio nally increases (see above). Also, Sanchez (1973a,b) reported that in such soils y ields can be severely reduced because roots may be physically damaged or impeded in their growth as the soil dries below the saturation level. 3. They maintain or decrease land productivity (compared with continuously flooded rice) and, therefore, do not produce more rice with l ess water on a eld basis. > The most promising option to save water and increase water pro ductivity without decreasing land productivity too much is by reducing the ponde d water depth from 5
10 cm to the level of soil saturation. Water savings were on a
verage 23% (14%) whereas yield reductions were only 6% (6%). The adoption of suc h techniques will have implications for irrigation systems because water deliver y to the field needs to be very accurate and timely. Farmers operating pumps would likely benefit most from this water-saving irrigation technique. Most Asian farmers in publi c irrigation systems have little incentive to reduce water input to their fields since i rrigation water is mostly charged on an area basis. Some economists therefore advocate s hifting to a pay-pervolume system to induce farmers to save water (e.g. Rosegrant, 1997). > Total rice production can then only be maintained, or increase d, by using the water thus saved to irrigate other previously unirrigated lands. If this is not done, a strategy of saving water at the field level to improve water productivity potentially threatens tota l rice production at large. Optimization of water use requires knowledge of the water prod uction function. Some experimentally derived production functions were presented in this study. However, ecophysiological models, which describe the interaction between crop, water, so il and weather, are needed to extrapolate the empirical results as pr esented here to other areas (e.g. the model ORYZA; Wopereis et al., 1996a). ________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ [ Rice Production in Water-scarce Environments ] Abstract > This chapter reviews the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) s integrated approach, using genetics, breeding and integrated resource man agement to increase rice yield and to reduce water demand for rice production. > Water-saving irrigation, such as saturated-soil culture and al ternate wetting and drying, can drastically cut down the unproductive water outflows and increase water productivity. However, these technologies mostly lead to some yield decline in the current lowland rice varieties. > Through the adoption of water-saving irrigation technologies, rice land will shift away from being continuously anaerobic to being partly or even completely aerobic. These sh ifts will have profound changes in water conservation, soil organic-matter turnover, nutrient dynamics, carbon sequestration, soil productivity, weed ecology and greenhouse-gas emissions. Whereas some of the se changes can be perceived as positive, e.g. water conservation and decreased methane emi ssion, some are perceived as negative, e.g. release of nitrous oxide from the soil and decline in soi l organic matter.
Strategies for Increasing Water Productivity at the Field Level
> (i) increasing the yield per unit cumulative ET; (ii) reducing the unproductive water outflows and depletions ( SP, E); or (iii) making more effective use of rainfall (II) Reducing unproductive water outflows > Large reductions in water input can be potenti ally realized by reducing the unproductive E and SP flows during land preparation and dur ing the crop growth period (Tuong, 1999; Bouman and Tuong, 2001). There are basically three ways to do so: (i) Minimizing the idle periods during land pr eparation > In transplanted rice, seedlings are us ually nurtured in a seedbed for about 2 4 weeks. In irrigation systems that lack tertiary and field channels and with field-to-field irrigation, all the fields surrounding the seedbeds are being tilled (land prepar ation) and flooded during this period. This land-preparation period can be shortened by the provision of terti ary infrastructure to: (i) supply irrigation water directly t o the nurseries without having to submerge the main fields; and (ii) allow farmers to carry out their farming activities independently of the surrounding fields (Tuong, 1999). > In the Muda irrigation scheme, Malaysi a, increasing the canal and drainage intensity from 10 to 30 m ha1 has enabled farmers to shorten their land preparation by 25 days, resulting in annual water savings of 375 mm in two rice cropping seasons (Abdullah, 1998). > In some countries, such as Vietnam and China, specific land areas are set aside for community seedbeds, which can be irrigated independently. > Another way to reduce the idle period during land preparation in irrigation systems without tertiary canals is the use of direct seeding (Bhuiyan et al., 1995). However, the crop growth period in the main field of transplanted rice is shorter than that of directseeded rice. Thus, the amount of water saved by direct seeding depends on the balan ce between the reduction in water use caused by shortened land preparation and the inc rease in water use caused by prolonged crop growth duration in the main field (aft er crop establishment (Cabangon et al., 2002)). (ii) Soil management to increase resistance to water flow > The resistance to water flow can be in creased by changing the soil physical properties. Cabangon and Tuong (2000) showed the b eneficial effects of an additional shallow soil tillage before land preparation to close cracks that cause rapid bypass flow at land soaking.
(iii) Water management to reduce hydrostatic p
ressure > Reducing S and P flows through reduced hydrostatic pressure can be achieved by changed water management (Bouman et al., 1994). Instead of keep ing the rice-field continuously flooded with 5 10 cm of water, the floodwater depth can be decreased, the soil can be kept around saturation (saturated soil culture (SSC)) or alternate wetting an d drying (AWD) regimes can be imposed. Soil saturation is mostly achieved by irrigating to ab out 1 cm water depth a day or so after disappearance of standing water. In AWD, irrigation water is applied to obtain 2 5 cm floodwater depth after a larger number of days (r anging from 2 to 7) have passed since the disappearance of ponded water. Wei Zhang and Si-tu S ong (1989) reported yield increase under AWD. Our recent work indicates, howeve r, that these are the exception rather than the rule (Bouman and Tuong, 2001; Tabbal e t al., 2002b). In most cases, SSC and AWD decrease yield. The level of yield decrease dep ends largely on the ground water-table depth, the evaporative demand and the drying peri od in between irrigation events (in the case of AWD). Mostly, however, relative reduct ions in water input are larger than relative losses in yield, and therefore water producti vities in respect of total water input increase (Fig. 4.2). In some cases, AWD even doubled the wa ter productivity compared with conventional flooded irrigation, but with yield red uctions up to 30% (e.g. Tabbal et al., 1992). Opportunities and Challenges in the Adoption of Water-saving Practices > The challenge is to identify the environmental and socio-econo mic conditions that encourage farmers to adopt them. In this respect, our research is far from complete. We can, however, identify impor tant factors that affect the farmers acceptance of water-saving technologies. Unlike fertilizers and pesticides, water is generally not acti vely traded on markets in Asia, and government-administered fees for irrigation water are often low or zero. This discourages f armers from treating water as a scarce resource. Farmers have no incentive to adopt water-saving technologies because water con servation does not reduce the farming expenditures nor does it increase income.