U.S., WORLD SCIENTISTS WORK TO IMPROVE EARTH'S WATER (Communities must look to their limits.) by Jo Campbell, Ecotopics International News ServiceŠ

(The Eastern Shore has its own land-use problems and is dealing with them rather tentatively. Major land-use studies around the U.S. tell us what can be done against horrendous odds to assure that there will be fertile lands and new technology to produce our major food supplies in the future. Will talk about Shore agriculture soon.)

Lubbock, Texas -- Cyclic drought and global population growth are straining the Earth's supply of water, the lifeblood of human existence, and occasionally the cause of deadly conflict.

Increasingly concerned about the problem, the world scientific community is looking for ways of using the water supply more efficiently. In the United States, this work is being done at centers dedicated to the study of water resources management, and they are sharing their research experience with specialists from around the world.

One such center, Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, has joint projects with the Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST), initially financed with a grant in 1989 from the U.S. Information Agency.

The Texas Tech program has involved other nations as well, including Syria, Israel, Jordan, Niger, Mali, Chad, Bahrain, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Turkey, China, Australia and Guatemala.

"However difficult wresting production from arid and semi-arid lands may be, what is at stake is productivity for about one third of the planet," says Dr. Idris Rhea Traylor, director of the International Center for Arid and Semi-Arid Lands Studies (ICASALS) at Texas Tech. About 15 percent of the world's population lives on the arid and semi-arid lands, he says.

While semi-arid lands are at least marginally productive, Traylor says, in order for them to stay that way and develop an even greater potential, farming methods must aim for greater purity of water and greater efficiency of its use. That is the goal of ICASALS.

Scientists in related fields at institutions in Texas and in its neighboring and equally arid state of New Mexico agree that agriculture can no longer shape the soil and water use to fit old plant varieties. It is time, they maintain, to develop crops that can prosper in existing conditions.

Dr. Harold Dregne, a Texas Tech University scientist specializing in the study of desert lands, says drought and population pressures dictate "good water management, and that means good land management."

Lands near the edge of deserts, Dregne said in an interview, have "changed since humans came into the picture. They are now degraded by too much grazing and too much tree-cutting. Now, the type of vegetation has changed from shrubs and grasses to only low-quality shrubs."

Even in places like Sudan and the Sahel, in Dregne's opinion, unproductive arid land can be rescued. "With the exception of very limited areas around the world, dry regions are capable of being restored to their original condition," he said. "Nothing has happened to the soil which would bring about permanent change in it. And it is the soil that you have to be primarily concerned about."

Land use, therefore, Dregne believes, can determine the future for areas that are now considered lost to production.

Studies have shown that water use in the past 80 years in the United States has increased up to 800 percent -- more than the rate of population growth.

Worsening pollution and the rising cost of ever-growing water and energy consumption led the U.S. Government in 1964 to create 54 Water Resources Research Institutes (WRRI) at selected U.S. universities.

Today, these centers administer grants for the development of research measures to produce the essential food and fiber for the nation while protecting water resources. They have trained more than 40,000 scientists and engineers in soil and water reclamation technologies and shared this knowledge and experience through worldwide student and faculty exchanges administered by the Consortium for International Development (CID).

Both New Mexico and Texas draw their water from the Ogallala aquifer, which they share with the great plains states, reaching from the central state of Nebraska almost to the Mexican border in southern New Mexico. This area is a major source of wheat, cotton, sorghum, maize,vegetables and livestock.

At New Mexico State University at Las Cruces, Bobby J. Creel, deputy director of the Water Resources Research Institute, explained in an interview that the Ogallala has dropped almost 30 centimeters each year for more than 20 years. This was considered irreversible, Creel said, and farmers on the aquifer thought they had 20 years of water left. In the next 40 years the Ogallala was expected to diminish, forcing farmers to return more than two million hectares of irrigated lands to old-fashioned dry-land cultivation.

These probabilities may still come true, Creel said, but recent good rains and increasingly careful water use have had good results. Today, what was thought impossible is happening -- the aquifer is rising.

In addition, Dr. Lloyd V. Urban, director of Texas Tech's Water Resources Center and associate professor of civil engineering, said that rock and sand formations above the Ogallala water table hold as much water as has been removed from the aquifer. Soil scientists plan to borrow an air-injection process from the petroleum industry and use it to release this water.

Encouraged by these possibilities, U.S. scientists and their international colleagues are working harder than ever.

A major aim of research in the United States is the safety of U.S. ground water, on which some 127 million people depend. The use of pesticides and agricultural chemicals has contaminated some of the ground water with these substances .

In the past few years a growing number of scientists has sought to solve some of the problems of water supply and water quality through plant genetics. Their goal is the development of crop plants that use less water and resist pests and diseases. Such plants would put less of a burden on water supplies and, at the same time, would reduce the need for chemical pesticides that might pollute ground water.

Dr. Mary O'Connell, assistant professor of agronomy and horticulture at New Mexico State University, is one of three scientists in the United States doing research in this field. She works in the university's molecular biology program to develop a drought-resistant tomato plant.

"The tomato plant we are using (for parent stock) has thick leaves, and it absorbs water from the air. It closes its (circulatory system) very rapidly when going through a period of water deficit. So it holds the water that it has and it manages to grow fairly well in that manner," she explained.

Dr. O'Connell said she hopes to find the genes that help the tomato to survive, then put those genes into a cultivated plant to see whether or not they would help the plant to grow in a more water-efficient manner. "While no one plant has to be totally drought-tolerant," Dr. O'Connell said, "even a 10 or 20 percent increase in efficiency will yield significant decreases in the water cost on a large-scale production."

WRRI analyses show that an 18 percent reduction in water loss can be worth more than 600 million dollars a year in production costs to the Great Plains farmers.

Another plant-development project at New Mexico State University is being carried out by Osama Momtaz, a Ph.D. candidate from Cairo, Egypt. He has been working on cotton plants, hoping to introduce a gene that will produce a toxin against the bollworm.

Momtaz hopes his research can solve a water problem in Egypt. "What I am doing in genetic engineering can help reduce the large amount of chemicals we now have to use on the land to kill insects. These chemicals go into the water of the Nile, which we drink," Momtaz explained.

Egyptian medical research has shown a significant and growing insecticide content in the blood of Egypt's population, Momtaz said. This may be reduced as a result of his work when he returns to his post at Egypt's Agricultural Research Institute.

Still other scientists have devised mechanical refinements in farming technology that reduce the amount of water needed to produce essential food and fiber. One example is the "trickle" irrigation technology, which involves the release of small amounts of water on or under the ground.

Dr. Richard Zartman, associate professor of soil engineering at Texas Tech University, says below-ground trickle irrigation makes optimum use of precious water because water piped under the surface does not evaporate in the sun.

Trickle irrigation, with its piping, pumps and valves, is long-lasting but capital-intensive, especially when compared to pouring water into a furrow, Zartman explained. Subterranean systems not only eliminate water loss by evaporation, but water under the surface can be piped to the optimum level for use by the plant roots in amounts the plant needs.

"We developed many of today's crops to fit a world in which water and the energy to bring it to the field were unlimited," Zartman said. Today, however, "We must change farming to suit the reality," he added.

A Texas Tech colleague, Dr. Lloyd Urban, agrees, adding his own note of realism: "I think much of what we can hope for is not going to be accomplished by ourselves, but by the students from all over the world with whom we try to share some of the possible solutions. When these young men and women go out into the world, applying and trying new things, then maybe we will make a dent."