Water resources of the world and the value of water:
Water use and water-stress world-wide, competition for water, water foot-print, Water price (access to water, irrigation projects, subsidies)
Water use in Agricultural systems:
History: The origins of water use and the development from the neolithic revolution to modern times, water use in different regions of the world under different natural and cultural conditions, technological development along with developments in agriculture and society. Irrigation and environmental impact. Water quality and effluent water from agricultural use, Salinization in irrigated agriculture.
Surface irrigation methods: Basin irrigation, Furrow irrigation:
Basin irrigation: levelling, distribution of water on the field, losses due to evaporation and deep percolation, optimization based on water application and soil type, furrow irrigation: Field preparation, field lay-out in terms of furrow spacing, inclination and length. Dealing with superficial drainage.
Pressurized irrigation: sprinkler and micro irrigation:
Sprinkler irrigation systems: Hand-set, irrigation machines, components and set-up of a micro irrigation system: Head station, penstock, emitters; testing, operation and maintenance of micro-irrigation systems; filtering, application of fertilizers (fertigation), irrigation and fertigation in protected cultivation
Automation in irrigation control:
Soil moisture monitoring, monitoring of water and nutrient status of the crop, remote sensing, sensor use, communication and sensor fusion, precision irrigation.
Irrigation demand and economics of irrigation:
Water use efficiency, Crop water productivity, cost of irrigation equipment (fixed costs), gross margin
Sustainable water use in irrigation:
Planning, evaluation of intervention policies.
The climatic water balance:
Function of water in plants, Plant physiological reactions to drought, Crop Water Requirement (CWR) modeling based on climatic water balance