A recent UN report describes many regions as facing ‘water bankruptcy, ’ a condition in which available water resources can no longer meet existing demands. In practice, this means irrigation will likely bear the greatest burden of future water‐use reductions, a complicated and fraught decision to make given its critical role in food security. This review paper highlights the growing range of information now available through...

The over‐exploitation of groundwater in agriculture necessitates the adoption of water‐efficient practices. A field study (2020–2022) under cotton–wheat cropping in semi‐arid Punjab, India, evaluated subsurface drip irrigation (SSDI) with lateral depths (20, 25 and 30 cm), emitter spacings (20, 30 and 40 cm) and irrigation levels (60%, 80% and 100% ETc). Bayesian optimization was used for multicriteria decision‐making. The res...