Drainage Capture and Water Recycling on Crop Production and Water Quality.

Drainage capture and water recycling on crop production and water quality C. S. Tan, T. Q. Zhang Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada, GPCRC, Harrow, Ont. Canada, N0R 1G0 SSSA International Annual Meeting, Nov 14-19, 2015, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA Abstract. Increasing incidences of drought and/or climate extremes in Southern Ontario have had serious negative impacts on environment (i.e. potential leaching for unused residues of nutrients) and field & horticultural crop production. Hence, new innovative water management system must be developed to improve crop production, increase water, nutrient use efficiency and reduce nutrient losses. To address these issues, an integrated reservoir-controlled drainage/sub-irrigation water recycling study (Drainage Capture and Reuse) was conducted in southern Ontario. The objectives of these studies are to determine the effectiveness of the innovative water management systems for reducing nutrient (N, P) losses from agricultural fields and improving field and horticultural crops production. The controlled drainage/subirrigation (CDS)-reservoir system under field crop production reduced total P and N losses by 12% and 21% relative to the regular free drainage (RFD) system, respectively. The drip irrigation water recycling system under processing tomatoes increase water and nutrient use efficiency relative to non-irrigated system. The CDS-reservoir system consistently increased corn and soybean yields relative to RFD system. In the droughty years, corn yield was increased by 91% and soybean yield was increased by 49%. In the relative wet years CDS-reservoir increased corn yield by average 15% and soybean yield by 19%. The commercial large scale drip irrigation water recycling system increased processing tomatoes yields by average 36% relative to non-irrigated system. This system also increased water and nutrient use efficiency by 25% and 35%, respectively, relative to non-irrigated system.