The water footprint of root and tuber crops

Sustainable food and agriculture is emphasized in recent times to provide for present and future generations with a lesser impact on the environment. Equal importance is given to environmental impact assessment of crop production and related processes to understand their effect on the environment and natural resources and formulate measures and policies to mitigate the same. Water footprint assesses the impact of products and processes on freshwater resources. This paper is an attempt to review available research on water footprint assessment of root and tuber crops and their products majorly potatoes, cassava and sweet potatoes. Root and tuber crops are gaining importance as major food security crops and are a more sustainable alternative to cereal crops in terms of water footprint. Apart from this, root and tuber crops (majorly, cassava and potato) are also gaining importance as feedstocks for biofuel production; however, they have a higher water footprint than sugar crops (sugar beet, sugar cane) used. Further research is required on the water footprint assessment of root and tuber crops especially crops other than potato, cassava and sweet potato and their products to help to achieve their full potential as sustainable food and energy crops. Efforts to develop ecocrop models to assess the suitability of tuber crops in different agroecological locations and effective utilization of green water to achieve more crop per drop and to reduce the water footprint are to be strengthened.