Abstract
Soil water potential is a soil property affecting a large variety of bio-physical processes, such as seed germination, plant growth and plant nutrition. Gradients in soil water potential are the driving forces of water movement, affecting water infiltration, redistribution, percolation, evaporation and plants’ transpiration. The total soil water potential is given by the sum of gravity, matric, osmotic and hydrostatic potential. The quantification of the soil water potential is necessary for a variety of applications both in agricultural and horticultural systems such as optimization of irrigation volumes and fertilization. In recent decades, a large number of experimental methods have been developed to measure the soil water potential, and a large body of knowledge is now available on theory and applications. In this review, the main techniques used to measure the soil water potential are discussed. Subsequently, some examples are provided where the measurement of soil water potential is utilized for a sustainable use of water resources in agriculture.
Highlights
Water resources management is one of the most pressing environmental issues, especially because of the competition between industry, agriculture, municipal and energy utilization of water resources.At the global level, 80%–90% of all the water is consumed in agriculture
In the Po river basin, of the total water drawn from the river, 16% is used for municipal usage, 20% is used for industrial activities, 18% for energy and 46% for agriculture
The metallic plates are connected to a circuit for measurement of the dielectric properties, which are highly dependent on its water content and the soil water potential (SWP) potential is obtained from calibration curves
Summary
Water resources management is one of the most pressing environmental issues, especially because of the competition between industry, agriculture, municipal and energy utilization of water resources. For the optimization of irrigation techniques, improvement of irrigation planning and employment of specific cropping systems, it is often necessary to compute the water budget of a given farm, catchment, river basin or region. Knowledge of the SWP alone is not sufficient to provide all the necessary information needed to compute the soil water budget, it is an important variable that can be utilized to improve water use in irrigated agriculture. Water management in agriculture plays a key role in determining effective water savings plans and optimization of natural resources for sustainable agricultural activities. It can take advantage of a variety of experimental and modelling techniques to improve its efficiency. Some examples of application of these techniques for water management in agriculture and their application for optimization of water resources, are presented
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