You could e-mail Dr. Marshall English at Oregon State University for more, but my informed view holds that there is no difference. It may be that water productivity is a bit more contemporary. The term 'water use efficiency' has been around very long, but I believe recent work in deficit irrigation in western USA may be promoting this term instead.

Example: Texas researchers and producers are reported to have moved from 24" (61mm), to 18" (45.7mm) to produce 200 bushels of corn per acre. They now are aiming to produce 200 bushels of corn with a mere 12" (30.5mm). Both the water use efficiency and the water productivity are improving along identical paths.

That said, of course, the devil is in the details....meaning, has the seed, fertilization, soil health, pest management, soil chemistry delivered the improvement, or is simply trimming back on water delivered (to the a more well-defined 'active root zone') enabled this. Also, as in parts of California's Imperial Valley, does deficit irrigation, something which can be perfected with precision irrigation system design, only delay the need to flush soils of the salts that precipitated near the lower end of the root zone?

hi there, its the denominator that is different. for water productivity the denominator is water transpired while for WUE it is water used (evapotranspiration)

Hello Narendra, thanks for question. There is no consensus about this.

I am still not sure about the above answers. They seems to be not correct. However, if your question will be more accurate next time, there will be more answers. Of. course, both are based on biomass production per drop of water :D.

After my level of knowledge they orchestrate to each other in slightly different ways. WP is meant on the all canopy or field (http://www.icarda.org/water-productivity) and WUE is surely based on individual plant response to water deficit (well, it is the integral part of WP as percolation or runoff are also). It seems to be in opposite what Vimbayi said above, truth is WP have in denominator total EP (which correlates to E on single plant level, density of plants, LAI, LAD, angle of leaves to the source of radiation etc.) and WUE (note that WUEi= Pn/Gs and WUE=Pn/E; WUEi seems to be more effective indicator, because transpiration from leaves is influenced by more resistances and inner conductivities!) has a transpiration of single plant as a denominator. However, all this discussion can be incorrect if we understand well what prof. Blum said in his article Effective use of water (EUW) and not water-use efficiency (WUE) is the target of crop yield improvement under drought stress (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378429009000860) about WUE and EUW.

I hope this will be helpfull Narendra, have a great day today!

Milan

Basically there is no difference between WUE and WP. There is also not one definition that can be provided here. They both define the resources used (water) to produce a certain amount of something. First, the water resources can be defined in many ways depending on the target. Examples are the irrigation water applied, the evapotranspiration, the transpiration, etc. Also for production several options are possible such as biomass production, harvested yield, or the economic value of the product.

However, water use efficiency is used in two disciplines with two different targets. Irrigation engineers use WUE to assess the efficiency of water delivery to a field or irrigation unit, whereas agronomists, plant physiologists, water resources managers use WUE to assess plant production over water use. The latter came up with the term water productivity to stress the distinction between the two.

Another article that explain and criticize about Irrigation Efficiency, Water Productivity and Water Use Efficiency is so useful for this distinction:

Efficiency and productivity terms for water management: A matter of contextual relativism versus general absolutism

Gerardo E. van Halsema, , Linden Vincent

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377411001430

Dera Narendra, water use efficiency and productivity are two different terms. When we talk about efficiency, basically we are comparing different irrigation systems like surface irrigation vs. drip vs. sprinkler. Based upon this, one conclude that if we apply 100 liter water, maximum water utilized by the plants (may be for growth, biomass, yield etc) was under drip. It means, there is a minimum loss/wastage of water via drip, hence drip is more efficient method. But when we talk about water productivity, it is necessarily a production quant. Means, what we are getting in terms of biomass/yield per unit of water applied. Hope u got my point

Regards

Shashi has given good explanation. Water use efficiency and productivity are different things. WUE is not related to yield. It means the WUE can be higher for low yield too. Yield depends on many factors. However, WPI or WP is related to yield and volume of water application. It is an applied performance indicator. Farmers and management unit are very much engaged. One measures how efficiently water used or delivered to field or crop production. On the other hand, WP measures yield per unit of water application. Indeed, WP is the modern and effective measure for the crop productivity. WP helps to measure the productivity and/or performance of of individual farmers within the irrigation block too. If WP improves then WUE must increase but WP may/will not increase for improving WUE all the time.

Hi Narendra,

Water use efficiency and water productivity are two different terms. Please find in attached more explanation about that.

CWP has two terms one is economical (net benefite of crops per cubic water consumed) and the second is physical that later is yield (kg) per cubic of water consumed. But WUE is only kg dry matter of crop per cubic meter of water consumed or evapotranspiration (ET).

Actually, applied water use efficiency and water productivity are two indicators are used to evaluate the irrigation performance and its variability between irrigation systems and crops

if crops obtained all consumed water from irrigation without rain you should using water use efficiency or irrigation water use efficiency to evaluate the irrigation performance or any other treatments.

WUE=Yield/ETa

IWUE=yield/gross depth of irrigation

while, Water productivity=yield/(total amount of water -amount of rain)

water productivity indicates yield per unit of water applied. While WUE is the efficient utilisation of water for producing more biomass . In some crops like amaranthus the meaning may be the same but in other crops like maize or rice you can also interpret them differently.

WP=ETa/Yield

WUE=Yield/ETa

Practically in the Western Australian wheat belt with rain fed systems WUE = grain yield(T/ha) /rainfall (mm). This may be further refined by calculating $/ha/mm to calculate income/WUE. These calculations are used to assess the profitability of an enterprise when comparing farmers or crops or even seasons.

WUE= is more of technical aspects- engineering concept

WP = refers to relationship between crop produced and the amount of water involved in crop production= crop production per unit volume of water

"Water productivity" and "water use efficiency" are related concepts that are often used in the context of agricultural and ecological studies to describe different aspects of how efficiently water is used in various processes. However, they focus on different aspects of water management and have distinct meanings:

In summary, while both water productivity and water use efficiency relate to efficient water utilization, they emphasize different aspects. Water productivity assesses the overall efficiency of water use in generating valuable outcomes, while water use efficiency specifically measures how effectively water is used to promote plant growth or yield.