Facing Water Scarcity in Egypt by Intercropping: Maximizing Maize Production to Reduce its Gap under Changing Climate

In this book, we quantified the effect of using management practices to increase current maize productivity and reduce production-consumption gap that is about 45%. These suggested management practices were precise land leveling and cultivation on raised beds, which can save 25% of the applied water to surface irrigation. Furthermore, we quantified the effect of intercropping maize with soybean, maize intercropped with tomato, cowpea intercropped with maize and relay intercropping potato with maize on reducing maize production-consumpation gap. Similar procedure was done under climate change in 2030 using highly accurate weather data. Finally, quantification of the effect of these suggested management practices on maize water productivity was done. These quantifications are very important for policy makers to be included in their future plans.

Prof. Abd El-Hafeez A. Zohry was the former manager of Crops Intensification Research Department; Field Crops Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center in Egypt. He is the winner of "WatSave Innovative Water Management Award 2015" from ICID-CIID in India. He has 33 publications on implementing crop rotations and intercropping.