As the most important resource for life, water has been a central issue on the international agenda for several decades. Yet, the world’s supply of clean freshwater is steadily decreasing due to extensive agricultural demand for irrigated lands. Therefore, water resources should be used with greater efficiency, and the use of non-traditional water resources, such as Treated Wastewater (TW), should be increased. Reusing TW could be an alternative option to increase water resources. Thus, many countries have decided to turn wastewater into an irrigation resource to help meet urban demand and address water shortages. However, because of the nature of that water, there are potential problems associated with its use in irrigation. Some of the major concerns are health hazards, salinity build-up, and toxicity hazards. The objectives of this comprehensive literature review are to illuminate the importance of using TW in irrigation as an alternative freshwater source and to assess the effects of its use on soil fertility and other soil properties, plants, and public health. The literature review reveals that TW reuse has become part of the extension program for boosting water resource utilization. However, the uncontrolled application of such waters has many unfavorable effects on both soils and plants, especially in the long-term. To reduce these unfavorable effects when using TW in irrigation, proper guidelines for wastewater reuse and management should be followed to limit negative effects significantly.
Water resources are subjected to ever-increasing supply constraints due to extensive agricultural water demand for irrigated lands. Therefore, water-saving irrigation strategies need to be explored. The present study was conducted to explore the possibilities of using regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) and partial root zone drying irrigation (PRD) methods as water-saving irrigation techniques for subsurface irrigation. The objective of this study are to assess the effects of RDI and PRD irrigation on the water productivity of vegetable crops (tomato) under SSD systems in arid climatic conditions, and to compare the responses of tomato crops to PRD, RDI, and FI under an SSD system in terms of productivity, crop quality, and the amount of water saved. The field experiment was conducted during the fall 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 seasons in an experimental field located on an educational farm owned by the Faculty of Food and Agriculture Sciences Department, King Saud University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. An area of 102.7 m 2 (13 m × 7.9 m) was allocated for the experiment to manage three treatments: RDI, PRD, and full irrigation (FI). The RDI and PRD treatments received 70% of the irrigation water volume of FI. Each was replicated three times. The most important results indicated that the soil water content (SWC) for the RDI and PRD treatments was lower than that of the FI treatments. FI had the highest stomatal conductance values (gs), while PRD had the lowest stomatal conductance values. The photosynthetic rate (A n) was lower under RDI and PRD compared to FI. However, there was no significant change in A n between treatments for most readings taken during both time periods, which means that the water saving treatments (PRD and RDI) did not affect the net photosynthesis rate, thereby enhancing irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE) under DI treatments. The water-saving irrigation techniques decreased transpiration rate (T) compared to the FI treatment. The values of the abscisic acid (ABA) contents were higher under PRD and RDI than FI. The marketable yield under the FI treatment yielded the highest values. The fruit quality parameter results showed that the RDI and PRD treatments increased the total soluble solids, vitamin C, and titratable acidity of tomato compared to the FI treatment. Most of the minimum IWUE values were associated with FI. These results indicate the effects of deficit levels on IWUE.
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