Increasing water productivity of irrigated crops under limited water supply at field scale

Borkhar district is located in an arid to semi-arid region in Iran and regularly faces widespread drought. Given current water scarcity, the limited available water should be used as efficient and productive as possible. To explore on-farm strategies which result in higher economic gains and water productivity (WP), a physically based agrohydrological model, Soil Water Atmosphere Plant (SWAP), was calibrated and validated using intensive measured data at eight selected farmer fields (wheat, fodder maize, sunflower and sugar beet) in the Borkhar district, Iran during the agricultural year 2004–2005. The WP values for the main crops were computed using the SWAP simulated water balance components, i.e. transpiration T, evapotranspiration ET, irrigation I, and the marketable yield YM in terms in terms of YMT−1, YM ET−1 and YM I−1.