Abstract
Water and nutrients are the two most limiting factors to productivity especially under rain-fed agriculture. This chapter highlights novel climate smart technologies and techniques for conserving water and nutrients within plant root zones of typically marginal coarse-textured soils rapidly permeable to water. These technologies enable multi-season and off-season production of high value crops resulting in more than doubling of production with about 40–60% supplemental irrigation requirements. From a case study, we hypothesized higher tomato yields under coupled soil subsurface water and nutrient retention than under either factor in isolation. Our field experimental design enabled us to disaggregate and aggregate the effects of both water and nutrient stresses to quantify their relative importance to tomato yields. Highest mean fruit yield (68.7 ± 7.7 Mg ha−1) was from double-dug beds installed with impermeable polythene sheets which received a combined application of NPK and vermicompost. Mean fruit yield for this same treatment was 46.6 ± 4.9 Mg ha−1 under conventional tillage and 46.3 ± 5.2 Mg ha−1 under double-dug beds without polythene sheets installed. Water did not limit tomato yields significantly because the rainfall was above normal throughout this particular experiment. With increasing frequency and severity of climate change-exacerbated droughts intensifying competition for the already stressed freshwater resources, these technologies must be urgently disseminated to foster resilience to climate change especially for agro-environments with marginal coarse-textured soils.
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Olupot, G. et al. (2021). Novel Climate Smart Water and Nutrient Conservation Technologies for Optimizing Productivity of Marginal Coarse-Textured Soils. In: Leal Filho, W., Azeiteiro, U.M., Setti, A.F.F. (eds) Sustainability in Natural Resources Management and Land Planning. World Sustainability Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76624-5_13
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