Abstract
The optimization of irrigation use in agriculture is a key challenge to increase farm profitability and reduce its ecological footprint. To this context, an understanding of more efficient irrigation systems includes the assessment of water redistribution at the microscale. This study aimed to investigate rainfall interception by maize canopy and to model the soil water dynamics at row scale as a result of rain and sprinkler irrigation with HYDRUS 2D/3D. On average, 78% of rainfall below the maize canopy was intercepted by the leaves and transferred along the stem (stemflow), while only 22% reached the ground directly (throughfall). In addition, redistribution of the water with respect to the amount (both rain and irrigation) showed that the stemflow/throughfall ratio decreased logarithmically at increasing values of incident rainfall, suggesting the plant capacity to confine the water close to the roots and diminish water stress conditions. This was also underlined by higher soil moisture values observed in the row than in the inter-row at decreasing rainfall events. Modelled data highlighted different behavior in terms of soil water dynamics between simulated irrigation water distributions, although they did not show significant changes in terms of crop water use efficiency. These results were most likely affected by the soil type (silty-loam) where the experiment was conducted, as it had unfavorable physical conditions for the rapid vertical water movement that would have increased infiltration and drainage.
Highlights
The competition for freshwater between agricultural, industrial and civil uses has intensified over the last few years, worsened by the negative effects of climate change and pollution
Total rainfall during the experimental period was 159 mm on average (±2 mm), as partly provided by rainfall events, which were homogeneous throughout the study area, and partly by sprinkler irrigation, which changed depending on the distance from the sprinkler
A similar stemflow/throughfall partitioning had already been observed in other studies [8], where the water redistribution between the row and the inter-row was measured in the field with conditions similar to ours: the authors showed that the lowest rainfall events were associated with the highest stemflow/throughfall ratio, while with higher rainfall, the ratio stabilized at values
Summary
The competition for freshwater between agricultural, industrial and civil uses has intensified over the last few years, worsened by the negative effects of climate change and pollution. Incident rainfall is partly intercepted by the leaves and flows down the stem (i.e., stemflow) and partly falls directly to the ground without leaf interception (i.e., throughfall) This results in microscale variability in infiltration, distribution and root water uptake [6]. Van Weesenbeck and Kachanoski [7] studied the soil moisture dynamics in maize, observing that in-row soil water infiltration was greater than in the inter-row, as a consequence of stemflow interception. These results were confirmed by Hupet and Vanclooster [6], who measured a wide variability of rainfall beneath the maize canopy, ranging from
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