EEA provides you with up-to-date information on drought issues in the Commonwealth. You can view maps and charts that label which regions are experiencing drought conditions. You can also view data used to determine drought conditions.

Our research on nitrate leaching during drought and extreme precipitation involved a multi-faceted methodology, combining field-level mass balance, deep vadose-zone monitoring, and shallow groundwater observation. The study was conducted in a 34-ha field in Yolo County, California, with a focus on a processing tomato-cucumber rotation. Groundwater monitoring wells and a deep vadose-zone monitoring system were used to assess nitrate leaching throughout the growing and rainy seasons. Field-level water and nitrogen mass balances were calculated using irrigation data, crop evapotranspiration (measured via eddy covariance and remote sensing), and soil water storage changes. Nitrogen inputs and outputs were meticulously recorded, considering fertigation practices, mineralization, and plant uptake. The study adhered to ethical and legal standards, with all data collection approved by relevant authorities, ensuring compliance with environmental monitoring regulations. Our results highlight the variability and uncertainty in nitrate leaching estimates, underscoring the importance of continuous monitoring to accurately assess agricultural impacts on groundwater quality. This methodology can be reproduced by following the detailed steps outlined in our data description and published paper. The necessary context, methodology, and techniques, along with information on legal and ethical adherence, are detailed in the attached files 'Data description' and 'Manuscript'.

Drought is one of the major abiotic stresses negatively influencing crop yield and is a serious issue in modern agriculture. To achieve further substantial crop improvements in terms of drought resistance it is necessary to incorporate scientific results into breeding strategies. However, most of the data on plant drought responses arises mostly from small-scale studies and, therefore, its use in breeding programs is very limited. Here, we present the results of the large-scale proteomic analysis performed on barley recombinant inbred lines (RILs) and their parental genotypes subjected to drought, applied shortly before tillering. The conducted proteomic analyses enabled us to monitor drought-induced proteome changes in leaf and root tissue, and to identify proteins that responded to drought in a genotype-specific manner, for instance Rubisco activase, luminal binding protein, phosphoglycerate mutase, glutathione S-transferase, heat shock proteins as well as enzymes involved in phenylpr...