Course description

Drainage in Agriculture: Controlling Water and Salt Levels in the Soil

Join this course to advance your knowledge in drainage, drainage systems and solutions, and to help securing a sustainable food supply. In this course, you will work on different modules, apply the knowledge gained directly to your home country drainage situation. Furthermore, you will learn from other cases and learners worldwide, expanding your horizon on the global importance of drainage.

Upcoming start dates

1 start date available

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Self-Paced Online
Online
English

Suitability - Who should attend?

Prerequisites:

Preferably a Bachelor degree in agricultural water management or a similar programme. It is assumed that you have some basic knowledge on soil chemical, physical and biological processes, hydrology, hydraulics, irrigation and agricultural water management.

Outcome / Qualification etc.

What you'll learn

Understand the concept of drainage and its role in agricultural water management
Explain physical and agro-hydrological principles underlying drainage of agricultural land
Make water and salt balances to calculate drainage needs
Formulate drainage criteria
Make sound estimates for drainage parameters needed to design drainage systems
Understand differences between steady-state and unsteady-state drainage approaches
Understand the need for more control in agricultural drainage management
Design drainage system that enable more operational control

Training Course Content

The course consists of five modules.

In Module 1, the need for drainage, the drainage methods and the design approaches for agricultural drainage systems are introduced.
In Module 2 you will learn more about the hydrological principles related to drainage and drainage design equations.
Module 3 discusses the general aspects of drainage of saline and sodic soils.
Module 4 is an introduction to the implementation and operation maintenance of drainage systems.
Depending on your background and interest, you may decide by yourself in which sequence you do these three modules. But you should realize that in Module 5, all these different aspects of drainage are integrated to discuss the changing role of drainage in agricultural water management.