Agriculture in the drylands & sustainable desert agriculture

Dr. Alon Ben-Gal is a senior researcher in the Department of Environmental Physics and Irrigation, Institute of Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences, The Agricultural Research Organization, Gilat Research Center, Israel. Dr. Ben-Gal's work can may be best be described as: "X-treme agriculture: managing water in the arid zones". His research interests and expertise include: irrigation of crops; agricultural utilization of saline water and of recycled wastewater; optimization of water under irrigation in arid regions; plant response to environmental stress conditions; and flow and transport of water and solutes in the vadose zone. He enjoys active multi-disciplinary regional and multi-national collaboration on topics promoting agricultural water use efficiency and is the author of over 40 peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters.

Dr. Naftali Lazarovitch is a professor and researcher at the Wyler Department for Dryland Agriculture, French Associates Institute for Agriculture and Biotechnology of Drylands, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He received his PhD in 2006 from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His main research interests are creating a better understanding of water flow and solute transport in the soil-plant-atmosphere system, increasing agricultural water use efficiency using optimal irrigation and fertigation scheduling and modeling (numerical and analytical), measurements and interpretation of water flow and solute transport in the root and vadose zone. His work has been published in twenty journal articles.

Mr. Andrew I. Ayeni is a Geographer by training with specialization in Environmental Resources Planning (B.Sc Geography & M.Sc Environmental Resources Planning). He is presently Chief Environmental Scientist at the Drought and Desertification Department of The Federal Ministry of Environment, Abuja, Nigeria with responsibilities for drought forecasting and early warning systems, drought and desertification information and data bank management, desertification and climate change issues, water conservation and the restoration of degraded land among others. Mr. Ayeni has also worked with the Natural Resources Conservation Council of Nigeria as Conservation Officer from 1993-1996 and with the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, as Senior Environmental Scientist from 1997-2000. He has had seventeen years of cognate professional experience in Environmental Policy, management and project implementation. Mr. Ayeni is an active member of at least ten national and international professional organizations, advisory committees, and societies. He has participated in various national and international conferences, workshops and seminars with a wide range of reports, papers, studies to his credit on topics such as Desertification Management, Climate change and Biodiversity Conservation

Steven R. Evett is a Research Soil Scientist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, Conservation and Production Research Laboratory, Bushland, Texas. Dr. Evett uses field measurements, electronic sensing and automation systems and energy and water balance models to study irrigated crop water use, irrigation methods and automation as they affect crop water productivity, as well as water content sensing methods used to control irrigation and to quantify crop water use. In addition to research locations in the USA, he has active research projects in the Middle East and Uzbekistan on crop water use, irrigation scheduling and soil water measurement; and he has worked in China, Egypt, Jordan and the USA to build and use weighing lysimeters to measure crop water use. Since 2003, Dr. Evett has been the ARS research coordinator for the Middle East Regional Irrigation Management Information Systems (MERIMIS) Project, which has research and extension partners in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. He is a graduate of the University of Idaho and the University of Arizona. Dr. Evett is a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America and of the American Society of Agronomy, and is a recipient of the U.S. Dept. of Energy Federal Energy and Water Management Award and of the USDA-ARS Technology Transfer Award. He is a past President of the Texas Council of Chapters of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, past associate editor of Agronomy Journal, and currently serves as associate editor of the Vadose Zone Journal and on the Editorial Board of Agricultural Water Management.

Dr. John Hornbuckle is an irrigation and drainage engineer. He received his BS in Environmental Engineering from the University of New England in 1999, and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of New England in 2003. He is currently developing and investigating irrigation design and water management tools including ground based and remote methodologies for improving water use efficiency, maximizing production and minimizing the environmental footprint of irrigation. He is also the principle investigator on Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation (GWRDC) project, Vineyard Water Use - Adapting to Change and is involved in the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Irrigation Futures Toolkits for Profitability and Longevity project looking at the development of irrigation informatics for improving irrigation-based decisions to increase productivity and reduce the environmental footprint of irrigation. Dr. Hornbuckle is developing techniques for providing low cost irrigation scheduling and water management information over large areas using satellite and mobile phone SMS technology and is particularly interested in using remote sensing indices such as Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI) for crop coefficient determination. He is the author of eleven journal articles and eleven refereed conference papers, twenty-three non-refereed conference papers, twenty-two science or client reports and six trade articles. Dr. Hornbuckle has won several awards including: John Burton Institute of Engineers Australia Medal, Keith and Dorothy MacKay International travel fellowship from Colorado State University and the Land and Water Australia Travelling fellowship from the USDA Water Management Laboratory. He is a member of the: American Society of Biological and Agricultural Engineers and the Young Irrigation Network and regularly acts as a scientific reviewer for several scientific journals.

Samuel Igbatayo has a Bachelor's degree in Agriculture from Texas A&M University-Kingsville, Texas, USA in 1980 and a Master of Science degree in Agricultural economics from the same university in 1982. He received a degree in Doctor of Philosophy in Agricultural Economics from The Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria in 2006. A seasoned academic, Dr. Igbatayo is currently Dean of the College of Business & Management Studies at Igbinedion University, Okada, Nigeria. He has published widely in both national and international peer-reviewed journals and book volumes, and his research interests include: poverty, natural resources management and environmental issues.

Mr. Tcharbuahbokengo NFINN is the co-founder and Director General of the Federation of Environmental and Ecological Diversity for Agricultural Revampment and Human Rights (FEEDAR & HR). FEEDAR & HR is in Special Consultative Status to United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and has been accredited by the UNEP, WIPO, UNODC, UNCCD, GEF and the UN Human Rights. FEEDAR & HR was also a Winner of the Energy Globe National Award in 2007. Mr. NFINN has been the head of FEEDAR & HR since 2000, and in this position he is responsible for the implementation of objectives of the organization and of all projects. He serves as a member to the board of directors, a member to the annual budget and program allocation committee and negotiates and signs all contracts and outgoing communications. Mr. NFINN officially represents the organization in meetings, conferences, training sessions and negotiations. He designates delegates to events, and ensures good staffing of the organization. Mr. NFINN is also currently active in the following organizations: Focal Point Cameroon, Energy Globe; Focal Point Cameroon, End Water Poverty; Focal Point Cameroon, International Organization for Biotechnology and Bioengineering; and Environmental and Forests Engineers of Cameroon.

Since 2001, Professor Dov Pasternak has served as the Principal Investigator and Head of Crops and Systems Diversification for the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)- Niger. Previous to this position, Prof. Pasternak worked as the Head of the Institute for Agriculture and Applied Biology at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev from 1975 to 2001. His main areas of specialization are saline water irrigation and systems agronomy in dry regions. Prof. Pasternak has been awarded the: Boyko Chair on Saline Water Irrigation, UNESCO Chair on Rehabilitation of Desert Sand Dunes, The Bergman Prize for Applied Research, The Netafim Drip Visionary Award and The CGIAR Prize for outstanding inter-institutional partnership. He is the editor, co-editor and co-writer of six books, has contributed twenty-six chapters to different books and has had ninety-five articles published, forty of which have been in refereed papers. Prof. Pasternak has made significant contributions to his field through the development of: the Bioreclamation of Degraded Lands (BDL) system, the Sahelian Eco-farm (SEF), the African Market Garden (AMG), Solar greenhouses, soil warming systems with geothermal water, irrigation with saline water and landscaping with saline water.

Dr. Cecil Patrick received a PhD in Agricultural Engineering, Tillage & Water Harvesting, from Cranfield University at Silsoe in 2005, a MSc. in Agricultural Mechanization from Silsoe College, Cranfield Institute of Technology in 1988, and a BSc. in Agriculture from the University of Botswana and Swaziland in 1982. Dr. Patrick is currently employed by the Botswana College of Agriculture as a senior lecturer and head of the department of Agricultural Engineering & Land Planning.

Tom Thompson received his B.S in Agronomy from Abilene Christian University, his M.S. in Soil Science from Texas A&M University, and his Ph.D. in Soil Science from Iowa State University. From 1991 to 2006, Dr. Thompson was on the faculty of the University of Arizona in the Department of Soil, Water, and Environmental Science. While at the University of Arizona, Dr. Thompson had teaching, research, and extension responsibilities. In 2004, he spent a sabbatical leave at the Faculty of Agriculture of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. In 2006, he became Professor and Chair of the Department of Plant and Soil Science at Texas Tech University. In 2008 he was named J.A. Love Endowed Chair. In addition to serving as Department Chair, Dr. Thompson teaches undergraduate and graduate classes, advises graduate students, and conducts research. His primary area of research interest is efficient nutrient and water management for irrigated crops, especially with drip irrigation. He is a member of the American Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of America, and is Technical Editor of the Soil Science Society of America Journal. He has served as chair of division S-8 of the Soil Science Society of America. He currently serves as chair of the Advisory Committee of the Texas-Israel Exchange Research Program.

Rob Reid received a PhD in plant biophysics from the University of Sydney. He then moved to the University of Adelaide as a lecturer in plant nutrition in the Faculty of Agriculture before taking up his current position in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences where he teaches both plant nutrition and ecotoxicology. His research has mainly focused on the role of membrane transporters in plant growth and also in determining plant responses to toxic elements such as salinity, cadmium and arsenic. His best known work is in the area of boron toxicity, having demonstrated in 2004 that tolerance to boron toxicity must be due to boron efflux from the plant, then in 2007 publishing the sequences for the efflux transporters in wheat and barley.

Dr. Lascano has taught a graduate level class on soil-water-plant relations at Texas Tech University, since 1994 and has served on a graduate committee of more than 20 students and supervised 12 M.S. and 12 Ph. D. students as an Adjunct Professor at Texas Tech University Texas A&M University, and Wageningen University.
In the past Dr. Lascano has worked on the water balance and hydrology, micrometeorology, irrigation management, soil-water measurement, computer modeling and simulation, in relation to agronomy and crop production in semiarid agriculture. Dr. Lascano has published a mechanistic model that calculated the partitioning of evaporation of water from the soil and the crop and ways to reduce water evaporation from the soil surface as means to increase crop transpiration. Dr. Lascano has also worked on site-specific management of cotton at a landscape scale and showed that cotton lint yield across the landscape could be calculated using state-space analysis from soil water supply, elevation and nitrogen. High cotton lint yield is predicted in lower elevations of a field that favor accumulation of water and nutrients and reduce loss of water through evaporation. Lower cotton lint yields will be on the slope and the plateau, where the soil is susceptible to loss of water, organic matter and nutrients through erosion. The state-space analysis reflects weight of contribution of underlying variable to explain crop yield variability. More recently, Dr. Lascano has worked on a recursive calculation of crop evapotranspiration that uses as iterative solution to calculate the surface temperature that satisfies the energy balance of the evaporative surface. The theory was developed and tested by comparing measured and calculated values of crop evapotranspiration. It is shown that this method is physically accurate and that the traditional Penman-Monteith equations used for crop irrigation are in error.
Dr. Lascano has published more than 75 refereed journal publications, 26 Texas Agricultural Experiment Station Miscellaneous Publications, 55 Conference Proceedings, 2 book chapters, was co-editor of the Irrigation Monograph, 17 invited papers, and three computer software models with user's guides.