Organosilanized Hydrophobic Sand for Drought Resilience: Reducing Water Percolation and Enhancing Crop Growth Conditions.

ABSTRACT: Recently, increasing frequency and severity of drought events have resulted in significant crop yield reductions worldwide, indicating the critical need for innovative agricultural water management strategies to enhance water use efficiency. Addressing this challenge, we present a novel approach involving the strategic placement of highly hydrophobic sand layers below the subrhizosphere. This method utilizes silica sand modified via a facile, single-step surface treatment, yielding a material with strong hydrophobicity, characterized by a static water contact angle of 133.0 ± 1.0°. Importantly, the modified sand demonstrated stability and retained its hydrophobic properties under simulated adverse agricultural conditions. Systematic investigations of the hydraulic properties revealed that

SUBMITTER: Arcot Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12392176 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature