Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2009TX328B

Regulated Deficit Irrigation Application and Cotton Production in SW Texas

Institute: Texas
Year Established: 2009 Start Date: 2009-03-01 End Date: 2010-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $5,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $11,097

Principal Investigators: Yujin Wen, Tom Cothren

Project Summary: Water demand is increasing in South Texas due to the population increase. As the water resources are limited in this area, making a good plan for urban / agricultural water use is crucial. Regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) can be one of the measures to save water without affecting the crop yield. According to the previous study, approximately 25% of the water used in irrigation can be saved by maintaining the same yield. In this project, a further developed RDI experiment (using cotton as an example crop) was designed and planned to be repeated for at least two years in order to find the maximum water saving potential, and build a model of irrigation and crop yield. Five ‘fixed’ ratio regimes and two ‘dynamic’ ratio regimes are applied in the experiment. Their water use efficiency data will be collected in selected growth stages for comparison purpose as well. An irrigation-yield relationship curve or equation can be derived from the collected data as the objective of this study. This result is expected to be very helpful for the decision making on water issues as it may save more water for urban consumption and other purposes.