This system can assist with controlling drainage functions across three independently controlled crop production plots. Project outcomes will assist producers in addressing local and regional freshwater availability and nutrient leaching problems by developing modern agricultural water management (AWM) best management practices (BMPs) for mid-South production systems. Additionally, these outcomes will expand the geographic reach of the existing body of knowledge by establishing foundational science and building baseline performance standards specific to the mid-South. These performance standards will innovatively incorporate translatable results from literature into employed methods to efficiently target BMPs with the most potential for success. These BMPs will help to preserve agroecosystem productivity by building adaptive capacity that balances climatic fluctuations and increasingly erratic rainfall patterns that pose long term threats to agricultural resilience.

• Water Quantity: By controlling subsurface drainage, crop water use efficiency can be improved. Partial drainage reduces the residence time under saturated conditions after wet weather events; prolonged saturation can lead to anaerobic stress, delayed seed germination, impaired root development, and nutrient inefficiencies that create significant concern for overall plant health, yield, and harvest quality. Also, partial capture of nutrient-rich drainage waters within the soil column can increase access to soil moisture between wet weather events resulting in reducing the net irrigation requirement applied from freshwater sources.
• Water Quality: Both irrigation and drainage strategies can impact nutrient loading concentrations within the root zone as well as waters that exit the field. A strong relationship exists between fertilizer application timing, seasonal discharge volumes, and nutrient losses that can be explored.
• Agricultural Water Management: Nonpoint source (NPS) pollution causes significant global waterway impairment primarily attributed to excessive nutrient loading in agricultural runoff. The most prominent agricultural contaminants contribute to several possible downstream transboundary impairments including lowering dissolved oxygen, eutrophication, and sedimentation.
• Soil Health: Characterization of the soil microbial community structure and function can be compared across drainage treatments and between bulk and plant rhizosphere compartments of the soil to differentiate interactive impacts of crop physiology and irrigation management on microbial diversity and function. In addition to seasonal and longer-term changes in microbial communities, evaluating microbes during periods of high and low soil moisture may provide insight to optimization during the crop season.
• Greenhouse Gases: An evaluation of soil greenhouse gas emissions, specifically carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, can contribute to understanding tradeoffs in hydrologic versus gaseous losses of soil organic matter and nutrients while linking soil microbial community abundance and activities with ecosystem processes.

The long-term goal of this project is to evaluate new strategies for increasing resilience in AWM for Louisiana cropping systems. AWM BMPs can provide benefits to crop productivity, farm management, and downstream water quality. However, collective research has shown that practices such as tile drainage will only realize these benefits when managed to crop, soil, and environmental conditions. Tile systems create channelized flows that can alter hydrological, ecological, nutrient, and sediment dynamics of the watershed and increase pollution potential if not managed correctly. Additionally, the social and economic aspects of adoption strategies, barriers, and overall perceptions that drive change must be explored and incorporated into extension programming.