Agronomic and Environmental Approaches for Improving Field Water Management in the Scenario of Climate Change

The latest report of IPCC has sent a very clear and urgent message about the state of climate around the world. It highlights how human activities are driving unprecedented changes, warming the planet, and intensifying extreme weather events. For agriculture, climate change poses significant challenges to crop yields, particularly through increased water scarcity, erratic rainfall patterns, and extreme climatic events, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. Several studies highlight the strong correlation between climate change and water pollution and this is confirmed by a significant increasing of contaminants such as antibiotics, and microplastics in agroecosystems.

In this scenario, appropriate agronomic practices are needed to maintain and/or optimize the water use efficiency and avoid risk of desertification or pollution. Particularly, effective field water management is critical for sustaining crop yields and ensuring food security under these conditions. The FAO of the United Nations has recently reported that field water management through sustainable practices could allow to reduce losses due to evapotranspiration and increase agricultural production, mitigating the impact of climate change. In this context, smart field water management solutions, leveraging modern technologies such as artificial intelligence, remote sensing, and precision irrigation, offer promising approaches to optimize water use, and adapt to changing climatic conditions. Smart technologies enable real-time monitoring of soil moisture, crop water needs, and weather forecasts, facilitating data-driven irrigation scheduling and resource allocation. Furthermore, integration of smart systems with decision support tools enhances resilience at the farm level. In addition, the exploitation of nonconventional water resources like wastewater and desalinated water allows small and medium farms to find alternative water sources and can be sought to complement the conventional freshwater.

Seasonality variation in quality and quantity represents a specific characteristic of agricultural wastewater whose treatment appears difficult to manage by using conventional treatment systems due to various reasons. According to Sustainable Development Goals, for making wastewater valuable outputs and promoting projects of circular economy into the farm, it is crucial that wastewater undergo treatment directly on farm using nature-based solutions, such as constructed wetlands, lagoons, floating wetlands, and soil biofilters. Other innovative technologies that may permit to improve field water management are those included in vertical farming by maximizing land use efficiency, reducing water consumption and promoting water conservation. Farmers can obtain benefits by producing localized food, and limiting agricultural impacts.

This Research Topic focuses on advancements in field water management, aiming to optimize the water use efficiency, increase the use of smart technologies, and integrate the nature-based solutions in agricultural practices, mitigating the impact of climate change on crop production.

The implementation of current knowledge in this topic appears essential considering ongoing policies regarding water resource conservation and management in agriculture.

The Research Topic is addressed on the following, but not limited, themes:
- novel irrigation methods and water monitoring strategies;
- smart technologies for improving water use efficiency;
- irrigation with non-conventional water resources in dryland conditions;
- innovative nature-based solutions for wastewater treatment in agriculture;
- vertical farming for improving field water management in an agricultural context;
- circular economy projects concerning the optimization of water resources at farm level.

Original research papers, review papers, and case studies are welcome. Projects aimed to integrate agricultural, engineering and environmental sciences to improve field water management are strongly encouraged.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• ... View all formats

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Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Water Use Efficiency, Circular Economy, Vertical Farming, Wastewater Reuse, Nature Based Solution, Climate Change, Smart Irrigation Technologies

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.