Integrating biotreated wastewater reuse and valorization with enhanced water use efficiency to support the Green Economy in EU and India

Abstract

This work package identified the drip irrigation system and the deficit irrigation, PRD strategy, as a good management practice for water saving and improving water use efficiency and productivity. The new technologies such as Eddy Covariance and Scintillometers for actual evaporation measurement proved to be suitable for crop water irrigation estimation and could lead to significant improvement in water use efficiency and water saving of almost 50 % when compared with the globally used crop water requirement that is based on Penman Monteith equation. The new soil moisture probe of Cosmos rays proved to be able to sense soil moisture up to 60 cm and an external extent beyond 100 meters, thus could be used to accurately determine the soil moisture deficit of the root zone and subsequently could lead to water saving and increase in water use efficiency. The work package has also produced a new drip emitter that is suitable for poor quality water as well as quantified the drift in water application when using sprinkler irrigation. Moreover, the modelling work using the SALTMED model, supported by the field measurements at field scale, showed that the deficit irrigation scheme used (PRD) was suitable for treated waste water and quantified the water saving and the increase in water use efficiency and productivity when using the PRD as strategy with drip irrigation system. The results of upscaling from field to basin scale using the APEX model suggested the amount of potential water saving for maize to be 9.7% and 7.8% for potato.