The increase of field scale water use efficiency, commonly defined as the ratio of marketable yield or biomass to crop evapotranspiration, can be obtained from a range of practices that can be categorised into which convert more of the water resources into transpiration and those that increase the transpiration water use ratio. Relevant agronomic practices are those that can act directly or indirectly to: maximise yield, increase harvest index, increase transpiration vs. soil evaporation, reduce deep percolation, reduce surface runoff. This paper attempts to briefly review some topics that can be expected to stimulate more agronomic research on WUE in Mediterranean environments in the next few years, the discussion being focused to field crops. These topics include: conservation tillage, regulated deficit irrigation and partial root-zone drying, the revision process of the FAO irrigation and drainage paper n. 33 and precision irrigation. The improvement of water use efficiency at the field scale in the next few years is expected to depend equally on the use of the best agronomic practices available for each specific cropping system and on the availability of better varieties. However efficient systems for the transfer and promotion of successful agronomic research results into farming practice, through integrated participatory approaches, should also be in place, if real progress in this strategically important issue for the Mediterranean area is to be made.