The principal authors, and their collaborators, have brought together a vast amount of information and knowledge from diverse sources, which they have synthesised and condensed into this state of the art publication.

Basically, this book is about how to improve water productivity in agriculture, and the opportunities that exist for water saving, whether a crop is rain-fed or irrigated. As competition for water increases so does the need to justify its use in agriculture, not only in terms of productivity but also in financial terms. This book gives you the means by which this can be done, based on existing, but often incomplete, knowledge obtained from numerous field experiments conducted all over the world.

Modelling plays a key role in this process, which the first part of this book covers. It starts with a simple linear approach, but then concentrates on the development of the simulation model ‘AquaCrop’. This is followed by a description of the agronomic features of 16 herbaceous crops for which the model has been calibrated and validated. The yield response to water of fruit trees and vines forms the second major part of this publication where, in addition to a general section, available data are synthesised to produce production functions and guidelines for 14 individual crops, mainly subtropical and temperate.

The disc enclosed with the book includes e-versions of FAO Irrigation and Drainage Papers numbers 33 (Yield response to water), 56 (Crop Evapotranspiration) and 66, as well as links to key websites.

No one should underestimate the amount of work involved in the production of this beautifully illustrated book, and what has been achieved. It will be a standard text for many years.