Ogallala Water

Dr. Kisekka holds a joint faculty appointment in the Departments of Land, Air and Water Resources as well as Biological and Agricultural Engineering at University of California, Davis. He specializes in water management and irrigation engineering having completed a Ph.D. in agricultural and biological engineering at the University of Florida and faculty time at Kansas State University. His research focuses on developing water management strategies and irrigation technologies for tree, vegetable and field crops to help farmers optimize water productivity and profitability while exerting minimum impact on the environment.

In his previous faculty position at Kansas State University, Dr. Kisekka’ s research group led the development and evaluation of a hybrid system that integrates drip irrigation with center pivot sprinkler irrigation called Mobile Drip Irrigation (MDI). Dr. Kisekka’ s work has shown that MDI can reduce nonproductive evaporative losses resulting in improved water productivity. His research group also has generated experimental data on crop-water-evapotranspiration relationships. Dr. Kisekka’s group was also involved in improvement and application of crop simulation models as tools for transferring experimental data to different environments, climate, and management practices. This work has led to the development of a dynamic model-driven decision support tool (iCrop) that can be used for predicting effect weather, climate, soil, and management decisions on crop yield.

Dr. Kisekka’ s extension/outreach activities are informed by his research and involve directly working with farmers by helping them adopt sustainable water management strategies and technologies that enhance profitability while minimizing risk.

Selected Publications

Kisekka, I., J. Aguilar, F. Lamm, D. Rogers, and N. Klocke. 2016. Assessing Deficit Irrigation Strategies for Corn Using Simulation. Transactions of the ASABE. 59(1): 303-317.

Araya, A., I. Kisekka, P.V. Vara Prasad and P. Gowda. 2016. Evaluation of Water-Limited Cropping Systems in Western Kansas using DSSAT-CSM. Agricultural Systems. 150:86–98.

A. Araya, I. Kisekka, and J. Holman. 2016. Evaluating Yield and Water Productivity of Grain Sorghum under Deficit Irrigation, Variable Climate, Soils, and Planting Dates using AquaCrop. Irrigation Science. DOI: 10.1007/s00271-016-0515-7.