Management package to reduce irrigation water and increase water use productivity in sugar beet cultivation

The rapid growth of the world's population and the increasing occurrence of droughts due to climate change and human actions have made available water available for agriculture worldwide reduced. The sharp decline in water resources has made agriculture section, as the largest consumer of water resources, involve to serious drought challenge. Given the need to food and increasing crop yields as well as water scarcity in the country, increasing yields per unit area should be achieved by saving water consumption as well as increasing water productivity. In Iran, the current productivity of sugar beet is about 0.6 kg of sugar per m-3 of water. According to the major goals of water use productivity improvement plans, it is expected that in the year 2025, one kg of sugar will be produced per m-3 of water. To achieve the goals of the plan, it is necessary, besides to increase the yield of sugar to about 10 t.ha-1, make the water consumption closer to actual water requirement by managing the water resources and using water reduction strategies. This paper shows the issues related to the causes of low water productivity in sugar beet farming and presents a management package to reduce irrigation water use and increase water use productivity resulting from numerous field studies in different regions of the country. Suggested items are: 1- Early seeding of sugar beet, 2- Change in sugar beet planting pattern, 3- Deficient irrigation in growth stages of drought-tolerate, 4- use of pressure irrigation systems, 5- development of autumn sugar beet cultivation, 6- Use of recommended Varieties for water deficit conditions, 7 -Sugar beet planting using transplanting system, and 8 - Sugar beet seeding after harvest or last irrigation of autumn cereals. In this article, after introducing the management package, their effectiveness as well as guidelines for the requirements developed in the field are presented.