Translational Platform for Increasing Water Use Efficiency in Agriculture: Comparative Analysis of Plantation Crops

Shortage of water drives efforts to increase water use efficiency in agriculture. However, identification of hot-spots of water use inefficiency in agriculture is hindered by difficulty of monitoring the large number of factors that influence water use for irrigation. The goal of this study was to assess interrelations between crop type and topo-climate on water use, water use efficiency, and economic productivity, on a country and regional scales. We hypothesized that water use efficiency of plantation crops across topo-climatic regions do not match crop prevalence in each region. High-resolution datasets related to crop distribution, regional irrigation recommendation, and local multiyear reference evapotranspiration were integrated for the analysis of water demand (m³/ha), blue water footprint (m³/ton) and economic land (USD/ha) and water (USD/m³) productivity, across geographical regions throughout Israel. The results demonstrate a large variability in all indices across crops and regions, reflecting variability in water demand for individual crops, due to effects of topo-climatic conditions on reference evapotranspiration. Water footprint and water demand ranged ~ 90- 3,740 m³/ton and ~ 3,800- 23,500 m³/ha respectively, between crops. Large differences were identified between the highest and lowest water footprint amongst cultivation regions for some crops, such as avocado and almond, with a considerable portion of the cultivation area located in regions with the highest water footprint. This highlights the need to direct cultivation of crops to regions with relative low water footprint, to help reduce water use and increase water use efficiency. The results shown are a product of an interactive translational platform that facilitates access to an integrated high-resolution agricultural dataset via a user-friendly interactive Agri-Atlas, providing a comparative analysis of the agricultural and water footprints of different regions and crops in Israel. While the translational platform currently uses local data for Israel, it can be adapted for any country or region where agricultural data is collected, to support data-based studies and policies to help increase agricultural water use efficiency, in face of the growing demand for food and diminishing water supplies.