Dear Colleagues,

It is my pleasure to welcome you to this webinar organized by Agronomy, dedicated to the “Main Innovations in the Revised FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper 56 Guidelines for Computing Crop Water Requirements”.

Over recent decades, FAO56 has become a worldwide reference for estimating crop evapotranspiration and computing crop water requirements under a wide range of conditions. At the same time, major advances in scientific knowledge, data availability, and modelling capabilities, together with increasing pressure from climate variability and water scarcity, have made an update necessary. The revised guidelines respond to this context by integrating significant scientific and technical developments, including improved procedures for meteorological data assessment and correction, expanded crop coefficient information, updated approaches for estimating actual crop evapotranspiration, and the use of new data sources such as gridded weather datasets and remote sensing.

This webinar brings together researchers and practitioners who are investigating evapotranspiration, crop water requirements, and agricultural water management to discuss the main innovations introduced in the revised guidelines, their scientific basis, and their practical implications. By linking methodological developments with field applications, the webinar contributions will help highlight how these advances can support more accurate water management decisions and the more efficient use of agricultural water resources.

We hope this session will be both useful and stimulating for your research and professional activities, and we warmly invite you to join the discussion.