Enhancing Resilience of Dryland Agriculture Under Changing Climate (eBook)

This contributed volume describes management practices based on interdisciplinary and convergence science approaches from different disciplines of agricultural science to enhance the resilience of dryland agriculture. The main focus of this book is to address the current issues and trends along with future prospects and challenges in adopting salient agricultural management practices in drylands globally under a climate-change scenario. Climate change and global warming have profound repercussions on increasing frequency, severity, and duration of droughts and/or floods, which may have implications for future productivity of dryland agriculture, e.g., more water shortages or abundances and high or low runoff rates, diminished crop yields, and reduced water productivity. In past few years, many technological advancements and management strategies have been evolved to tackle the climate-induced risks of dryland agriculture considering interdisciplinary and convergence approaches that integrate knowledge from multi-disciplines. This book is an attempt to bridge the gap in literature by unraveling controversies and characteristics of dryland ecosystems under the changing climate and dealing with detailed procedures of applying the advanced practices adapted to climate change for management of dryland agriculture. This edited book is of interest to ecologists, economists, environmentalists, geologists, horticulturalists, hydrologists, soil scientists, social scientists, natural resource conservationists and policy makers dealing with dryland agriculture. This book offers a broad understanding of dryland agriculture and assists the reader to identify both the current as well as the probable future state of dryland agriculture in a global context. 

Dr. Anandkumar Naorem, is working as a scientist in ICAR-Central Arid Zone Research Institute, Jodhpur, India. He was the former Head-in-charge in ICAR-CAZRI, RRS-Bhuj, India. He received his bachelor's degree from Assam Agricultural University, Assam, India, and his master's degree in soil microbiology and bioformulation from the College of Post-Graduate Studies, Central Agricultural University, Meghalaya, India. His doctoral dissertation at Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, West Bengal, India, focused on soil heavy metal remediation for safe cultivation of crops. He has published more than 25 national and international articles that have been peer-reviewed, and has been awarded the best oral and poster presentations at numerous international seminars, workshops, and conferences. He received multiple national honours, including the 2015 Best Zonal Master's Thesis from the Indian Society of Soil Science. In addition, he has been awarded the UGC-Maulana Azad National Fellowship for Minority Students (India). He has been a frequent guest on science and technology-related All India Radio programmes. He has been leading several institution research projects focusing on soil quality in arid areas and is the principal investigator of an international effort to promote spineless cactus as dryland feed in arid regions of Gujarat.

Dr. Deepesh Machiwal is Principal Scientist (Soil & Water Conservation Engineering) at ICAR-Central Arid Zone Research Institute, Jodhpur, India. He obtained Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. Deepesh served as Assistant Professor (2005-2011) at College of Technology and Engineering, Udaipur, India. He worked as co-principal investigator in three research projects externally-funded by ICARDA, ICAR and state government. Deepesh has 59 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 4 books, 19 book-chapters, and 33 papers in conference-proceedings. His book was awarded by Outstanding Book Award-2012-13. He was conferred with Commendation Medal Award-2019, Best Paper Award-2018, Achiever Award-2015, Distinguished Service Award-2012-13, and IEI-Young Engineer Award-2012. He was awarded Junior Research Professional Fellowship and Second-Best Comprehensive Group Paper Award-2007 by IWMI, Sri Lanka. He was sponsored by FAO-Rome and UN-Water for participating in workshops at China and Indonesia.

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This contributed volume describes management practices based on interdisciplinary and convergence science approaches from different disciplines of agricultural science to enhance the resilience of dryland agriculture. The main focus of this book is to address the current issues and trends along with future prospects and challenges in adopting salient agricultural management practices in drylands globally under a climate-change scenario. Climate change and global warming have profound repercussions on increasing frequency, severity, and duration of droughts and/or floods, which may have implications for future productivity of dryland agriculture, e.g., more water shortages or abundances and high or low runoff rates, diminished crop yields, and reduced water productivity. In past few years, many technological advancements and management strategies have been evolved to tackle the climate-induced risks of dryland agriculture considering interdisciplinary and convergence approaches that integrate knowledge from multi-disciplines. This book is an attempt to bridge the gap in literature by unraveling controversies and characteristics of dryland ecosystems under the changing climate and dealing with detailed procedures of applying the advanced practices adapted to climate change for management of dryland agriculture. This edited book is of interest to ecologists, economists, environmentalists, geologists, horticulturalists, hydrologists, soil scientists, social scientists, natural resource conservationists and policy makers dealing with dryland agriculture. This book offers a broad understanding of dryland agriculture and assists the reader to identify both the current as well as the probable future state of dryland agriculture in a global context.