For nearly a century, scientific advances have fueled progress in U.S. agriculture to enable American producers to deliver safe and abundant food domestically and provide a trade surplus in bulk and high-value agricultural commodities and foods. Today, the U.S. food and agricultural enterprise faces formidable challenges that will test its long-term sustainability, competitiveness, and resilience. On its current path, future productivity in the U.S. agricultural system is likely to come with trade-offs. The success of agriculture is tied to natural systems, and these systems are showing signs of stress, even more so with the change in climate. More than a third of the food produced is unconsumed, an unacceptable loss of food and nutrients at a time of heightened global food demand. Increased food animal production to meet greater demand will generate more greenhouse gas emissions and excess animal waste. The U.S. food supply is generally secure, but is not immune to the costly and deadly shocks of continuing outbreaks of food-borne illness or to the constant threat of pests and pathogens to crops, livestock, and poultry. U.S. farmers and producers are at the front lines and will need more tools to manage the pressures they face. Science Breakthroughs to Advance Food and Agricultural Research by 2030 identifies innovative, emerging scientific advances for making the U.S. food and agricultural system more efficient, resilient, and sustainable. This report explores the availability of relatively new scientific developments across all disciplines that could accelerate progress toward these goals. It identifies the most promising scientific breakthroughs that could have the greatest positive impact on food and agriculture, and that are possible to achieve in the next decade (by 2030).

Efficiente water use: a multi-dimensional approach, principles of water use efficiency in cities and industri. Efficient use of irrigation water, implications for public policy, water re-use, water quality and rights considerations "The drought is real" designing a successful water conservation campaign. Quality of materials and its impact on public water supply systems and household installatins. Water for agriculture: improving the efficiency of center pivot irrigation with Lepa. Water use efficiency in irrigation districts. Protection of groundwater quality through efficient irrigation. On-farm water and energy use for irrigation in Latin America. Efficient water use in Basins and Making water potale in rural areas.

People use lots of water for drinking, cooking and washing, but significantly more for producing things such as food, paper and cotton clothes. The water footprint is an indicator of water use that looks at both direct and indirect water use of a consumer or producer. Indirect use refers to the 'virtual water' embedded in tradable goods and commodities, such as cereals, sugar or cotton. The water footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business. This book offers a complete and up-to-date overview of the global standard on water footprint assessment as developed by the Water Footprint Network. More specifically it: o Provides a comprehensive set of methods for water footprint assessment o Shows how water footprints can be calculated for individual processes and products, as well as for consumers, nations and businesses o Contains detailed worked examples of how to calculate green, blue and grey water footprints o Describes how to assess the sustainability of the aggregated water footprint within a river basin or the water footprint of a specific product o Includes an extensive library of possible measures that can contribute to water footprint reduction

Plant Modification for More Efficient Water Use is a compilation of the proceedings of the Symposium on Plant Modification for More Efficient Water Use. These proceedings aim to make significant progress in identifying the physiological and morphological characteristics of plants by providing considerable control of evapotranspiration and by exploring their possible manipulation. This book is divided into four parts focusing on genetic engineering, physiological and environmental factors, and modeling. The first part includes articles about breeding, genetic engineering, use of variety isogenes, genetic modification, and phenotype and drought tolerance in relation to efficient use of water. The second part presents articles about plant responses to water deficit, water-use efficiency, water stress, and drought resistance. It also provides articles on plant-water balance, carbon dioxide requirement, soil physical and chemical barriers, and soil temperature and air temperature. The third part describes models of plant growth for yield prediction; light models for estimating the shortwave radiation regime of plant canopies; and soil-plant-atmosphere model. In addition, this part includes a parametric analysis of the anatomy and physiology of the stomata. The last part offers a challenge on plant modification for more efficient water use.

"Australia is one of the driest places on the planet. We must learn that saving water is a vital and rewarding part of living sustainably." -- cover.