THE ROLE OF REMOTE SENSING, GEOPHYSICS AND CROP MODELING IN IRRIGATION MANAGEMENT: REVIEW AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVE.

The food and water security are the most critical issues across the globe owing to the continuous growing population. The agriculture sector is a largest consumer of fresh water and unwise use of water and poor irrigation systems are leading to rapid depletion of freshwater sources. Recently precision agriculture has emerged as an effective tool to improve the crop productivity while saving irrigation water. Agriculture is a complex system owing to different soil and climatic conditions, crops and topography and its interconnections with scarcity and availability of water. Thus, it is mandatory to understand these variables as well as spatial and temporal behavior which is essential to support precision agriculture through the implementation of optimum use of irrigation water. Different cost and time effective methods have been developed to optimize the crop productivity' without affecting the quality as well as quantity of different resources. Recently, remote sensing (RS) has emerged as an excellent tool to improve the crop productivity while saving the irrigation water. The application of remote sensing provides the information about the areas of interest from regional to farm scales while geophysics can investigate the sub-surface soil which can help to save the irrigation with improving crop productivity. Therefore, in present review we highlighted the role of remote sensing, geophysics and crop modelling in improving irrigation management to get maximum productivity while saving water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]