Water use efficiency across scales: from genes to landscapes - CIHEAM Montpellier - Centre International de Hautes Études Agronomiques Méditerranéennes de Montpellier
Journal Articles Journal of Experimental Botany Year : 2023

Water use efficiency across scales: from genes to landscapes

Hatem Belhouchette
Jérôme Bossuet
  • Function : Author
  • PersonId : 1228176

Abstract

Water scarcity will be one of the main issues of the 21 st century, because of competing needs between civil, industrial, and agriculture use. While agriculture is the largest user of water, its share is bound to decrease as societies develop. Clearly, agriculture needs to become more water efficient. Improving water use efficiency (WUE) at the plant level is important although there is a long way into translating this at the farm/landscape level. As we move up from a cell/organ/plant scale to more integrated scales such as plot, field, farm system, and landscape, other factors need to be considered, including trade-offs, to possibly improve WUE. These include choices of crop variety/species, farm management, landscape design, infrastructure development, ecosystem functions, where human decisions matter. This review is a cross-disciplinary attempt to analyze ways to address WUE at these different scales where metrics of analysis are defined and trade-offs considered. The equations in this perspective paper use similar metrics across scales for an easier connection and are developed to highlight which levers, at different scales, can improve WUE. We also refer to models operating at these different scales to assess WUE. While our entry point is plants and crops, we scale up the analysis of WUE to farm systems and landscapes.
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Dates and versions

hal-03993327 , version 1 (16-02-2023)
hal-03993327 , version 2 (28-03-2023)

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Vincent Vadez, Raphael Pilloni, Alexandre Grondin, Amir Hajjarpoor, Hatem Belhouchette, et al.. Water use efficiency across scales: from genes to landscapes. Journal of Experimental Botany, 2023, ⟨10.1093/jxb/erad052⟩. ⟨hal-03993327v1⟩
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