Cellulosic Biomass Can Be Produced with Less Water and Lower Nutrient Leaching On Highly Permeable Marginal Soils.

High quality water, the world’s most finite critical resource, ensures economic, environmental, political and social stability. Excessive infiltration and redistribution of water within highly permeable soils are well known. To avoid past agroecological errors during the conversion of marginal sandy soils into viable cellulosic biomass production systems, subsurface water saving membranes (WSM) can be coupled with prescription-based best water management practices that promote sustainable agricultural production. Soil scientists and engineers at Michigan State University developed and field-tested a patented membrane installation device (MID) to install WSMs at multiple soil depths in large lysimeters and field research. This novel subsurface water retention technology (SWRT) dramatically reduces irrigation requirements by reducing deep drainage and retaining at least 50% more soil water in the plant root zone.  WSMs dramatically reduce drought stress events as long as two weeks even during the driest years. These WSMs are also designed to prevent flooding in the root zone of sandy soils.  Prescription irrigation of sands is now a possibility with SWRT water saving membranes which have been proven to dramatically augmenting biomass production by 150 to nearly 300%. This technology offers extraordinary boosts in crop yields by increasing shoot to root ratios, retaining more soil nutrients, improving soil water use efficiency, increasing soil C sequestration and protecting ground water. SWRT conversions of portions of more than 400 million acres of highly permeable sandy soils in the USA into regions of accelerated production of food and cellulosic biomass for liquid biofuels can be developed to provide efficient energy needs of the rapidly expanding population.