A1262292085vqOtF

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Role of agriculture in water research
From vision to ACTION P.S. Bindraban
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World Water Forum

• how to cope with increasing water scarcity?
• what scarcity?

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food for thought...
sufficient food availability world-wide
sufficient water available per person world-wide!
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food for thought...
Primarily rainfed agriculture
solutions to water problems should be location
specific... help to solve the food problems...
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food for thought...
world population is increasing 2000 6 000 000
000 2040 11 000 000 000
people get richer ? consume more food (meat)
Mainly irrigated agriculture
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food for thought...
rainfed agriculture
irrigated agriculture
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International context

• most attention in World Water Forum / dialogues
  on irrigation

• not-well exploited are options to increase food
  production and water use efficiency under
  rainfed agriculture and in non-terrestrial
  ecosystems

• multistakeholder platforms do not include
  agriculture!

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wasting water in the Sahel!

• apply water ? yield hardly increases
• apply fertilizers ? yield increases much

not water, but nutrients limit yield!
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water for food Role of agriculture in water
research
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Water saving in rice cultivation Converting
inundated rice cultivation into dry rice
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Why research on rice ecosystems?

• heavy water consumer 5000 l/kg rice

• important food crop 50 of the world population
• in Asia 80 of caloric intake is rice
• food security lt--gt water security

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Rice wet or dry

• land preparation
• weed
• water buffer
• inflow of nutrients
• nitrogen fixing organisms
• dissolving nutrients
• controlling acidification
• diseases
• fish

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Changing conditions - changing practices

• Labor requirement and direct seeding
• Land pressure and multiple cropping
• Water scarcity and water-less-rice production
• Global climate change and methane emission in
  rice fields

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Project aims

• Strengthening international rice networks and
  capacity building

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Participants
Plant Research International Netherlands Devel
opment Economics group Netherlands WL Delft
hydraulics Netherlands Nanjing Agric.
Univ. China Jiangxi Agric. Univ. China Tam
il Nadu Agric. Univ. India Central Research
Institute for Food Crops Indonesia University of
Antananarivo Madagascar Cornell Intern.
Institute for Food, Agric. and Dev. USA IRRI,
WARDA CGIAR
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MSc studenten Tamil Nadu - India
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Marrying irrigation to plant, animal, social and
other disciplines

• Water distribution

• Crop/variety choice
• Agronomic practices

• Multistakeholder platforms

• Reuse of waste water

• Water quality

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International role of advanced institutions

• Not at agronomic or disciplinary level
• Integrated analyses (crop-soil-water-air,
  bio-economic)
• Integration of scales (field - farm - irrigation
  scheme - region)
• Utilization of advanced technology
• Advanced knowledge on high production - low
  environmental impact
• International exposure