Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) is a water-saving technology that lowland (paddy) rice farmers can apply to reduce their water use in irrigated fields. In AWD, irrigation water is applied to flood the field a certain number of days after the disappearance of ponded water. Hence, the field is alternately flooded and non-flooded. The number of days of non-flooded soil in AWD between irrigations can vary from 1 day to more than 10 days.

At drying cycle of AWD, seepage and percolation losses are reduced. On the average AWD when compared to continuous flooding can reduce water input by 15-30% without yield loss.

Where can we use AWD? Click on the images to view where.

AWD will be discussed in details in module 4.

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Now that you know some situations where AWD is needed we can now proceed to the summary of different water saving options under different levels of water availability.