Water-Saving Potential of Different Agricultural Management Practices in an Arid River Basin

Water scarcity threatens food security in arid areas, highlighting the importance of water-saving agriculture for production. Agricultural management practices are developed to improve water-use efficiency, and their effects generally evaluated at field scale rather than regional scale. To figure out potential irrigation methods mulching practices, FAO AquaCrop model was first calibrated validated three experimental stations. With aggregating spatial information, a distributed constructed typical river basin northwest China. Twelve combinations soil (plastic straw) (basin, furrow, drip, subsurface drip) were simulated using evaluate effect agricultural on crop evapotranspiration (ET), water productivity, consumption. The results showed that mulching, advanced methods, reduced noneffective evaporation (E) E/ET ratios improved productivity. Plastic combined with drip is most promising practice, increasing productivity seed maize spring wheat by 18.2% 11.1% average reducing consumption 7.7% (75.0 million m3) 7.4% (72.7 m3), respectively. reduction extraction ranged from 20.6% under furrow straw 68.7% plastic mulching. This study quantitatively assessed reduce use, offering practical implications development areas.