| In the world, catching rainwater for agriculture is an effective approach to solve the shortage of agricultural resources and has existed for several thousands of years. The paper expatiates the international advances of rainwater catchment in terms of the history of agricultural rainwater-catching research and the techniques and models of rainwater catchment and storage, the classification of rainwater catchment systems and the high-efficiency use of caught rainwater in nearly one century, and point out the current problems in agricultural rainwater-catching research which are (1) inadequate evaluation and calculation of regional potential rainwater resources, (2) lack of the research that integrates the individual techniques of rainwater catchment, storage, and utilization other than only paying attention to the individual techniques, (3) emphasis on the research of rainwater-catching flux and ignorance of the research of the rainwater-catching intensity, and (4) rainwater-catching models that do not take into account environment water requirements. At the end, the paper also envisages the future of the research of rainwater-catching agriculture. |