The relative “attractiveness” of the  technologies for farmers to respond to water scarcity depends on the type and level of water scarcity and on the socioeconomics of their production environment.

With absolute, or physical water scarcity, farmers have little choice but to adapt to receiving less water than they would need to keep their fields continuously flooded.

Click here to view water saving options at different levels of water availability.

• When there is high availability of water, farmers can practice continuous flooding of lowland rice and obtain high yields.
• When water is more than enough, water may be saved to increase irrigated areas.

  • Farmers can practice sound field water management such as crack plowing, thorough puddling, good land leveling, bund maintenance and construction of field channels to minimize water losses.
  • Farmers can practice water saving technologies such as SSC and safe AWD.
  • Farmers can adopt appropriate crop establishment methods including direct dry or wet seeding and raised beds system.
• With water scarcity, farmers have little choice but to adapt to receiving less water than they would need to keep their fields continuously flooded.

  • Farmers can practice AWD in irrigated and aerobic rice technology in areas with supplementary irrigation or favorable rainfed lowlands.
  • Farmers can practice crop diversification.
• When there is extremely short water supply like in the rainfed areas, farmers can plant upland rice varieties.

Now that you have identified different options of water saving technologies we can now proceed to discuss AWD in details.