IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/agiwat/v211y2019icp172-177.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Seawater and water footprint in different cropping systems: A chicory (Cichorium intybus L.) case study

Author

Listed:
  • Atzori, Giulia
  • Guidi Nissim, Werther
  • Caparrotta, Stefania
  • Santantoni, Federico
  • Masi, Elisa

Abstract

The world population is forecast to rise, needing a remarkable increase in food production. As agriculture is among the most water-demanding sectors, such augmentation could negatively affect water resource. Thus actions should be taken both to improve the water efficiency of current cropping systems and to seek alternative water sources for agriculture. The improvement of water efficiency in agriculture has been long investigated. Soilless culture, especially hydroponics, is characterized by a particular attention to the water resource. A different approach is represented by alternative water sources, i.e. seawater, considered as a realistic option in agriculture, either desalinized or blended with freshwater. This study compared the water footprint (WF) of the chicory crop (Cichorium intybus L. var. silvestre) grown in the following cropping systems: a conventional soilless system using freshwater (blue-hydroponics); conventional soil cultivation (blue-pots and open field); a soilless system integrated with a 10% share of seawater (sea-hydroponics); pots irrigated with a 10% share of seawater (sea-pots).By adding seawater to irrigation, we also introduced the "seawater footprint" concept, discussing the environmental implications of the provenience of the irrigation water. Our results showed a significant reduction in WF in both blue-hydroponic and sea-hydroponic (i.e. 64% and 75%, respectively) systems compared to soil cultivation with sea-hydroponics providing the best result in terms of biomass production and water saving. By contrast, sea-pots' performances in terms of WF were significantly lower (at P ≤ 0.05), with an increase of WF of 104% compared to open field cultivation. As the seawater share led to very different results in the two systems, it can be speculated that seawater is not the only reason for the sea-pots' poor performance. Nevertheless, the combination of poor results in terms of both biomass production and water saving and the detrimental effects of salinity on soil make the option of soil cropping with seawater unrealistic. However a controlled use of seawater in soilless culture could reduce, without any negative environmental concern, the freshwater withdrawal dedicated to food production. Moreover, our results also suggested a higher salt tolerance in hydroponic conditions compared to soil cultivation for the tested crop.

Suggested Citation

  • Atzori, Giulia & Guidi Nissim, Werther & Caparrotta, Stefania & Santantoni, Federico & Masi, Elisa, 2019. "Seawater and water footprint in different cropping systems: A chicory (Cichorium intybus L.) case study," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 172-177.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:211:y:2019:i:c:p:172-177
    DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2018.09.040
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377418305778
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.agwat.2018.09.040?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Atzori, Giulia & Guidi Nissim, Werther & Caparrotta, Stefania & Masi, Elisa & Azzarello, Elisa & Pandolfi, Camilla & Vignolini, Pamela & Gonnelli, Cristina & Mancuso, Stefano, 2016. "Potential and constraints of different seawater and freshwater blends as growing media for three vegetable crops," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 255-262.
    2. Mateos, Luciano & Araus, José L., 2016. "Hydrological, engineering, agronomical, breeding and physiological pathways for the effective and efficient use of water in agriculture," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 164(P1), pages 190-196.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Atzori, Giulia & Nissim, Werther & Macchiavelli, Tania & Vita, Federico & Azzarello, Elisa & Pandolfi, Camilla & Masi, Elisa & Mancuso, Stefano, 2020. "Tetragonia tetragonioides (Pallas) Kuntz. as promising salt-tolerant crop in a saline agricultural context," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 240(C).
    2. Subramaniam, Vijaya & Hashim, Zulkifli & Loh, Soh Kheang & Astimar, Abdul Aziz, 2020. "Assessing water footprint for the oil palm supply chain- a cradle to gate study," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 237(C).
    3. Xinchun Cao & Jianfeng Xiao & Mengyang Wu & Wen Zeng & Xuan Huang, 2021. "Agricultural Water Use Efficiency and Driving Force Assessment to Improve Regional Productivity and Effectiveness," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 35(8), pages 2519-2535, June.
    4. Fayezizadeh, Mohammad Reza & Ansari, Naser Alam Zadeh & Albaji, Mohammad & Khaleghi, Esmail, 2021. "Effects of hydroponic systems on yield, water productivity and stomatal gas exchange of greenhouse tomato cultivars," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 258(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Drew, Mark & Crase, Lin, 2023. "‘More Crop per Drop’ and water use efficiency in the National Water Policy of Pakistan," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 288(C).
    2. Luís Loures & José Gama & José Rato Nunes & António Lopez-Piñeiro, 2017. "Assessing the Sodium Exchange Capacity in Rainfed and Irrigated Soils in the Mediterranean Basin Using GIS," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-12, March.
    3. Mateos, Luciano & dos Santos Almeida, Alexsandro Claudio & Frizzone, José Antônio & Lima, Sílvio Carlos Ribeiro Vieira, 2018. "Performance assessment of smallholder irrigation based on an energy-water-yield nexus approach," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 176-186.
    4. Berbel, Julio & Gutierrez-Marín, Carlos & Expósito, Alfonso, 2018. "Microeconomic analysis of irrigation efficiency improvement in water use and water consumption," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 423-429.
    5. Luís Loures & Alejandro Chamizo & Paulo Ferreira & Ana Loures & Rui Castanho & Thomas Panagopoulos, 2020. "Assessing the Effectiveness of Precision Agriculture Management Systems in Mediterranean Small Farms," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(9), pages 1-15, May.
    6. Atzori, Giulia & Nissim, Werther & Macchiavelli, Tania & Vita, Federico & Azzarello, Elisa & Pandolfi, Camilla & Masi, Elisa & Mancuso, Stefano, 2020. "Tetragonia tetragonioides (Pallas) Kuntz. as promising salt-tolerant crop in a saline agricultural context," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 240(C).
    7. Pardo, J.J. & Sánchez-Virosta, A. & Léllis, B.C. & Domínguez, A. & Martínez-Romero, A., 2022. "Physiological basis to assess barley response to optimized regulated deficit irrigation for limited volumes of water (ORDIL)," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 274(C).
    8. Wang, Naijiang & Chen, Haixin & Ding, Dianyuan & Zhang, Tibin & Li, Cheng & Luo, Xiaoqi & Chu, Xiaosheng & Feng, Hao & Wei, Yongsheng & Siddique, Kadambot H.M., 2022. "Plastic film mulching affects field water balance components, grain yield, and water productivity of rainfed maize in the Loess Plateau, China: A synthetic analysis of multi-site observations," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 266(C).
    9. Julio Berbel & Alfonso Expósito & Carlos Gutiérrez-Martín & Luciano Mateos, 2019. "Effects of the Irrigation Modernization in Spain 2002–2015," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 33(5), pages 1835-1849, March.
    10. Zhang, Ling & Ma, Qimin & Zhao, Yanbo & Wu, Xiaobo & Yu, Wenjun, 2019. "Determining the influence of irrigation efficiency improvement on water use and consumption by conceptually considering hydrological pathways," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 213(C), pages 674-681.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:211:y:2019:i:c:p:172-177. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agwat .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.