Agriculture is the largest user of water, making it a big competitor for domestic and industrial users. To secure future food security, the irrigation water use efficiency must be increased. Deficit irrigation is an option to reduce irrigation amounts and farmers could opt for using other water resources with a lesser water quality.

Limiting water supply results in yield loss, whereas over-irrigation invokes leaching of water and fertilizers affecting the environment. Crop yield is closely related to water use, but often growers don’t know the precise water requirement of their crops, especially when marginal water sources are being used.

FLOW-AID contributes to sustainable irrigated agriculture by developing a deficit irrigation management system for farm-level crop production in cases with limited water supply and marginal water quality. It integrates innovative sensor technologies into a decision support system, taking into consideration boundary conditions and constraints for a number of practical growing systems in the Mediterranean. It focuses on innovative, simple and affordable, hard- and software concepts; particularly a maintenance free tensiometer, a wireless and low-power sensor network; an expert system for farm zoning and crop planning in view of expected water availability and quality; and an irrigation scheduler for allocation of multiple water sources. The system is being evaluated at four sites located in Italy, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, which differ in the type of local constraints, irrigation structures, crop types, local water supplies, availability of water and water sources in amount and quality, the local goals, and their complexity.