Rice Production with Restricted Water Usage: A Global Perspective

Abstract

GLOBAL rice production remains critically import for food security; however, fresh water is an ever-increasingly diminished resource. The objective of this manuscript is to select central and comprehensive research focusing on rice production and diminished water availability to isolate and authenticate emerging initiatives to address continuance of rice production and to ensure water sustainability. Three regions were selected: (i) Asia with an emphasis of China and India, (ii) The United States of America and (iii) The Mediterranean region with an emphasis on Egypt. Each of these regions recognize current or emerging issues associated with water quantity, water quality, urbanization, climate change and other technological, social and policy constraints; however, each region has a different hierarchy of issue importance. China and India recognize climate change, aquifer overdraft and pollution of water resources as central issues, whereas the mid-South region of the United States of America is more focused on irrigation technology to improve farm profitability. Egypt is primarily focused on water quantity and quality limitations, with substantial research addressing desertification and saline soils/water. This review focuses on stated research objectives in compelling, peer-reviewed literature to indicate regional approaches addressing the causes of restricted water availability for rice production and the most-probable approaches for maintaining rice production to safe-guard food security and producer profitability. Thus, unique rice water management approaches are predicated on the region’s water quantity and quality environmental assessment.