Flood Water Irrigation. Redirecting the water over your paddocks but ends up back into the creek. An old gold miners right still operating down Central Otago, South Island, New Zealand. Time frame only used between October- April

Water is a scarce resource and agriculture is said to be the highest user of freshwater on a global scale however, the current realities of a changing climate has projected this as unsustainable hence there's a need to enhance resiliency through water resource management.

In agriculture, water optimization have been largely engaged through varying agronomic practices such as mulching and cover cropping (for moisture conservation and enhancing infiltration), precision farming (supply of required amount of water to the rhizosphere soil to balance off transpiration effects on plants), watershed management (integrated system that promotes aquaculture, agroforestry and reuse of water on associated agricultural fields).

Largely, water optimization in agriculture can be engaged from different standpoints based on individual Research Interest. Physiology will address this more from frequency and timing of Stomata opening in a bid to reduce loss of moisture through transpiration. Ecology will strengthen the interrelationships of biological diversity to promote multilayer land cover with vegetation (intercropping and mixed farming) thus reducing evapo-transpiration all year round. Agricultural engineering will utilize construction of mechanical platforms for recycling water to meet crop consumptive use.

In all, long-term research is the best bet in consolidating on the viable pathways for optimizing water in agriculture.

Sustainable Production and Consumption - https://blog.aasopenresearch.org/2021/02/24/a-peek-behind-the-photograph-tailored-approaches-to-sustainable-food-production-and-consumption-in-nigeria/

Water plays a crucial role in the agricultural field for food production and raising livestock.

Given the current trends in world population growth. critical

issues, there is water management. Recently, innovative technologies have improved water management and

monitoring in agriculture. Internet of Things, Wireless Sensor Networks and Cloud Computing, have been

used in diverse contexts in agriculture. By focusing on the water management challenge in general, existing

approaches are aiming at optimizing water usage, and improving the quality and quantity of agricultural

crops, while minimizing the need for direct human intervention. This is achieved by smoothing the water

monitoring process, by applying the right automation level, and allowing farmers getting connected anywhere

and anytime to their farms. There are plenty of challenges in agriculture involving water: water pollution

monitoring, water reuse, monitoring water pipeline distribution network for irrigation, drinking water for

livestock, etc. Several studies have been devoted to these questions in the recent decade. Therefore, this paper

presents a survey on recent works dealing with water management and monitoring in agriculture, supported

by advanced technologies. It also discusses some open challenges based on which relevant research directions

can be drawn in the future, regarding the use of modern smart concepts and tools for Water management.

Regenerative agriculture can broadly be defined as “the process of restoring degraded soils using practices based on ecological principles.” As such, they say, it’s focused more on outcomes—improvements to soil health and quality and health of the soil, water, plants, animals, and humans—than on prescriptive practices.

https://thecounter.org/regenerative-agriculture-racial-equity-climate-change-carbon-farming-environmental-issues

Regenerative agriculture is very promising, but it isn’t clear it will scale.

https://agfundernews.com/regenerative-agriculture-is-getting-more-mainstream-but-how-scalable-is-it.html

Seab Williams, Feb. 24, 2021 " vertical farms nailed tiny salads. Now they need to feed the world" https://www.wired.co.uk/article/vertical-farms

Dr. Jonathan Foley, Aug 1, 2018 "No, Vertical Farms Won’t Feed the World" https://globalecoguy.org/no-vertical-farms-wont-feed-the-world-5313e3e961c0

https://www.treehugger.com/are-vertical-farms-still-a-thing-5116718

Closed-loop farms use little pesticide, are land and energy efficient, and recycle water.

https://theconversation.com/3-technologies-poised-to-change-food-and-the-planet-153852

https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/follow-the-food/why-our-food-needs-to-use-less-water/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Catrin Einhorn "The Most Important Global Meeting You’ve Probably Never Heard Of Is Now" Oct. 14, 2021

the 15th United Nations biodiversity conference ... Create a plan, across the entire land and waters of each country, to make the best decisions about where to conduct activities like farming and mining while also retaining intact areas ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/14/climate/un-biodiversity-conference-climate-change.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Matt Simon "Growing Crops Under Solar Panels? Now There’s a Bright Idea" Wired 10.14.2021

Plant crops underneath solar panels (agrivoltaics). Shading crops means they will require less water, which rapidly evaporates in an open field which also cools the solar panels by water evaporating from the soil rises up towards the panels (increasing panels’ efficiency).

https://www.wired.com/story/growing-crops-under-solar-panels-now-theres-a-bright-idea/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

It is necessary to take into account the balance of volume and quality (salinity) of water at different levels: on the surface and at different levels underground. you need to use everything. the irrigation system has an impact on all these levels. I have articles on the use of artificial intelligence for building models and their application of management:

Safronova T.I. The problem of groundwater quality management in rice irrigation systems and the concept of its solution / T.I. Safronova, E.V. Lutsenko // Polythematic network electronic scientific journal of Kuban State Agrarian University (Scientific Journal of KubGAU) [Electronic resource]. - Krasnodar: KubGAU, 2004. – №05(007). Pp. 116 - 124. - IDA [article ID]: 0070405011. - Access mode: http://ej.kubagro.ru/2004/05/pdf/11.pdf, 0.562 cu.p.l.

Safronova T.I. Synthesis, optimization and verification of semantic information model of groundwater quality management on rice irrigation systems / T.I. Safronova, E.V. Lutsenko // Polythematic network electronic scientific journal of Kuban State Agrarian University (Scientific Journal of KubGAU) [Electronic resource]. - Krasnodar: KubGAU, 2004. – №05(007). P. 125 - 132. - IDA [article ID]: 0070405012. - Access mode: http://ej.kubagro.ru/2004/05/pdf/12.pdf, 0.5 cu.p.l.

Safronova T.I. Cognitive structuring and formalization of the problem of groundwater quality management in rice irrigation systems / T.I. Safronova, E.V. Lutsenko // Polythematic network electronic scientific journal of Kuban State Agrarian University (Scientific Journal of KubGAU) [Electronic resource]. - Krasnodar: KubGAU, 2004. – №05(007). Pp. 133 - 147. - IDA [article ID]: 0070405013. - Access mode: http://ej.kubagro.ru/2004/05/pdf/13.pdf, 0.938 cu.p.l.

Safronova T.I. Research of semantic information model of groundwater quality management on rice irrigation systems / T.I. Safronova, E.V. Lutsenko // Polythematic network electronic scientific journal of Kuban State Agrarian University (Scientific Journal of KubGAU) [Electronic resource]. - Krasnodar: KubGAU, 2004. – №05(007). Pp. 148 - 171. - IDA [article ID]: 0070405014. - Access mode: http://ej.kubagro.ru/2004/05/pdf/14.pdf, 1.5 cu.p.l.

A lot of water has flowed since then... and the capabilities of automated system-cognitive analysis and the intelligent Eidos system have grown significantly

*The Eidos-X++ system differs from other artificial intelligence systems in the following parameters:

*- it was developed in a universal setting, independent of the subject area. Therefore, it is universal and can be applied in many subject areas (http://lc.kubagro.ru/aidos/index.htm);

*- it is in full open free access (http://lc.kubagro.ru/aidos/_Aidos-X.htm) and has all the relevant source texts (http://lc.kubagro.ru/__AidosALL.txt);

*- it is one of the first domestic systems of artificial intelligence of the personal level, i.e. it does not take special training in the field of technologies of artificial intelligence from the user (there is an act of introduction of system "Eidos" in 1987) (http://lc.kubagro.ru/aidos/aidos02/PR-4.htm);

*- it provides stable identification in a comparable form of strength and direction of cause-effect relationships in incomplete noisy interdependent (nonlinear) data of very large dimension of numerical and non-numerical nature, measured in different types of scales (nominal, ordinal and numerical) and in different units of measurement (i.e. does not impose strict requirements to the data that cannot be performed, and processes the data that can);

*- it contains a large number of local (supplied with the installation) and cloud educational and scientific applications (currently 31 and 290 (http://aidos.byethost5.com/Source_data_applications/WebAppls.htm), respectively) (http://lc.kubagro.ru/aidos/Presentation_Aidos-online.pdf);

*- it supports on-line environment of knowledge accumulation and is widely used all over the world (http://aidos.byethost5.com/map5.php);

*- it provides multilingual interface support in 51 languages. The language databases are included in the installation and can be replenished automatically;

*- the most time-consuming, computationally, are the operations of the synthesis models and implements recognition using graphic processing unit (GPU) where some tasks can only support up to several thousand times; the solution of these tasks is intelligent processing of big data, big information and big knowledge;

*- it provides transformation of the initial empirical data into information, and its knowledge and solution using this knowledge of classification problems, decision support and research of the subject area by studying its system-cognitive model, generating a very large number of tabular and graphical output forms (development of cognitive graphics), many of which have no analogues in other systems (examples of forms can be found in: http://lc.kubagro.ru/aidos/aidos18_LLS/aidos18_LLS.pdf);

*- it well imitates the human style of thinking: gives the results of the analysis, understandable to experts according to their experience, intuition and professional competence.

*- instead of making almost impossible demands on the source data (such as the normality of distribution, absolute accuracy and complete repetitions of all combinations of factor values and their complete independence and additivity), the  automated system-cognitive analysis (ASC-analysis) offers to process this data without any preliminary processing and thereby transform it into information, and then transform this information into knowledge by applying it to achieve goals (i.e. for the management) and solving problems of classification, decision support, and meaningful empirical research of the domain being modeled.

*What is the strength of the approach implemented in Eidos system? The strength is implementing an approach whose effectiveness does not depend on what we think about the subject area or whether we think at all. It generates models directly based on empirical data, rather than based on our understanding of the mechanisms for implementing patterns in this data. This is why Eidos models are effective, even if our understanding of the subject area is incorrect or totally absent.

*And this as well is the weakness of this approach implemented in Eidos system. Models of the Eidos system are phenomenological models, i.e. they do not reflect the mechanisms of determination, but only the fact and nature of determination.

Look for new technologies not implemented in India like Central Piovt or Lateral Pivot etc. which are very commonly used in the developed countries. These are most useful in improving the yield substantially.

Thank you all for valuable suggestions

Water Management/agriculture is dealt with in our two books:

Book National Water Security, Case Study of an Arid Country: Tunisia

(6) Sécurité Hydrique de la Tunisie, Gérer l'eau en conditions de pénurie | Request PDF (researchgate.net)

We are allowed to communicate copies of the book in french in the scientific sphere, just request on my RG page. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to do so with the English book

More resources on water resources in the arid zone can be found on the following projects referenes:

https://www.researchgate.net/project/National-Water-Security

https://www.researchgate.net/project/The-Holistic-Water-Balance-Blue-Green-Virtual-Water

https://www.researchgate.net/project/Water-Management-and-Governance-2

Good answer by Jamel Chahed

Dear Readers, The issue of National Water Security concerns drinking water supply but also food safety, linked to agricultural policy. Both rainfed and irrigated agriculture play complementary roles in food security, and the water issue implies a holistic view of water resources. To discuss this issue, I just started a discussion on water security and food security in arid countries:

(5) National Water Security in Water-Scarce Countries (researchgate.net)