Research identifies farming practices that improve irrigation efficiency
Mississippi State scientists are building on two decades of irrigation research to identify production practices that help growers save water while improving crop yields.
Dave Spencer, plant and soil sciences associate professor and scientist in the university's Mississippi Water Resources Research Institute, is studying how tillage, row spacing, fertility management and irrigation practices affect crop productivity and water use at the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station's Black Belt Branch in Brooksville.
This project builds on more than 20 years of irrigation research at the university's Delta Research and Extension Center in Stoneville, where Drew Gholson, plant and soil sciences associate professor and MAFES scientist, has studied how conservation practices affect soil moisture, irrigation demand and water-use efficiency in cotton production. Findings from the Stoneville study, recently published in Agricultural Water Management, showed cover crops improved water-use efficiency in cotton.
The Brooksville project expands that work by evaluating additional management practices in cotton, corn and soybeans across a wider range of soil types, weather conditions and production environments to maintain or improve profitability while conserving resources.
"What excites me most is identifying new management strategies that deliver meaningful benefits to growers in Mississippi and throughout the Mid-South," Spencer said. "I think we have a real opportunity to do that through improvements in tillage, row spacing and fertility management."
The Brooksville team is comparing conventional and conservation-based production systems to determine which practices use water most efficiently while maintaining or even improving productivity. Soil moisture sensors, runoff samplers and irrigation equipment installed across 27 research plots allow scientists to track water movement and measure water-use efficiency. Researchers are evaluating wide- and narrow-row spacings, alternative nitrogen management strategies and no-till, reduced-tillage and cover-crop systems in corn-soybean and corn-cotton rotations.
Gholson said the design of both studies allows researchers to measure water movement with unusual precision.
"Setting up an experiment like this is valuable from a research standpoint because we can measure every drop of water that enters and exits each plot, which allows us to create targeted water budgets for individual plots," he said.
More information
Carson Roberts et al, Reduced tillage and cover crop effects on soil moisture and infiltration, Agricultural Water Management (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2025.110108
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Citation: Research identifies farming practices that improve irrigation efficiency (2026, July 10) retrieved 11 July 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2026-07-farming-irrigation-efficiency.html
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