Focus on agricultural biotechnology: Prospective for bio-watersaving theories and their applications in the semi-arid and arid areas

Abstract

Drought and water shortage have become a world-wide problem in recent years with the effect of global
warming. Water-saving agriculture has become an inevitable direction of agronomical research, it has been
developed from practices through agronomic water saving to engineering water saving and to the approaches in
biological water-saving. The essence of biological water-saving should be the high-efficient use of water
through biological ways, namely the “utilization and exploitation of physiological and genetic potentials of
organisms so as to acquire more agricultural output and better economic and ecological benefits by utilizing
smaller or same amounts of water or poor quality water”. As a systematic approach, biological water-saving
should not only be applied with priority in crop production, but also in other aspects of agriculture and
industries such as husbandry, aquaculture, landscaping, sewage water management, water and soil
environmental conservations. Therefore, biological water-saving represents the human effort in the construction
of a resource-saving and environmental-friendly society.