Crop Planning and Water Management: A Survey

Agricultural systems pose many challenges and problems that can be formulated as optimization problems. Among these major challenges are crop selection and irrigation planning. That is, to decide on the proper set of crops to be cultivated and a proper irrigation scheme. Such decisions are made to achieve a certain objectives that typically include the maximization of net profit and/or the minimization of water waste. The problem is complicated by the existence of conflicting multiple objectives. In addition, water management represents one of the most critical problems that face the national interests in the current and near future, especially in the middle east, where, according to UNESCO, the main interstate conflicts over water occur/will occur in that region. Given that agricultural irrigation water accounts for 80% consumption of the world’s water resources, better agricultural systems management can play a critical role in the peaceful resolution of such crisis. This article presents an initial investigation of the recent work published in this field involving the mathematical formulation and the computational methods used to solve the resulting models.