Deficit Irrigation: A Critical Tool for Water-Scarce Environments

Insufficient irrigation water supply necessitates a shift in irrigation management from maximizing unit area yield to maximizing unit water consumption, i.e., water productivity. Deficit irrigation, defined as the application of water below the crop's full water requirement (evapotranspiration), serves as an important tool to achieve this goal. While widely implemented on millions of hectares of land due to various factors such as inadequate network design or irrigation over-expansion, deficit irrigation has not received sufficient attention in research.