Irrigation Water Management of Horticultural Crops

By Elías Fereres, D. Goldhamer, L. Parsons. 2003

194 citations recorded by the source corpus.

WP by increasing yield and/or reducing ET always results in net savings, thus reducing agricultural water requirements. This is a key point in assessing the opportunities for true water savings in horticultural crop cultivation and will be addressed in detail later in this paper. Water productivity in irrigated agriculture varies widely and depends on many biophysical and management factors. Because variations in ET among crops are within an order of magnitude apart, by far the most important factor infl uencing WP is the economic value of the product. Horticultural products are usually high value and thus WP normally exceeds that of fi eld and row (agronomic) crops. For example, using current values for yield and ET characteristic of California agriculture, the WP of corn is about 0.20 $/m3, compared to 0.70 $/m3 for almond, 5.00 $/m3 for strawberry, and even more for greenhouse and ornamental crops. An extreme example of this occurs with vegetable crops grown under plastic in southeast Spain during the off-season. The combination of high market prices and low ET leads to a WP of about 10 $/m3. While impressive, even this value cannot compete with that of industrial and urban uses. Nevertheless, it helps explain the trend of shifting irrigated acreage from low value fi eld and row crops to horticultural crops in many water-scarce areas of the US, a trend that will probably increase worldwide (National Research Council, 1996). Indeed, the WP of an irrigation district in Southern Spain increased over a four year period as the proportion of horticultural crops increased (I. Lorite, L. Mateos, and E. Fereres, unpublished data). This paper describes the evolution of water use as related to productivity with an emphasis on the U.S. experience, analyzes how irrigation systems and management have evolved since the early 1900s, and explores the challenges and opportunities for water conservation in horticulture. Because of the broad scope of the subject and limited space, the paper focuses primarily on tree crops although many principles are applicable to all horticultural crops.

Subfields: Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e6d8a55d99df90d9d51423cd045cd0d7d7c6f5f6

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Citations in the corpus

The Physiology of Adaptation and Yield Expression in Olive (2010, background): “It now appears, however, that irrigation water deficits imposed in this fashion, have the same effects on growth, water relations and productivity as those produced when the same quantity of water is applied with conventional deficit irrigation practices (Fereres et al. 2003).”
Benchmarking water-use efficiency of rainfed wheat in dry environments (2006, background): “Water scarcity and environmental concerns reinforce the need for high water-use efficiency (Fereres et al. 2003).”
Deficit irrigation for reducing agricultural water use. (2006, background): “Deficit irrigation in fruit trees and vines Deficit irrigation so far has had significantly more success in tree crops and vines than in field crops for a number of reasons (Fereres et al., 2003).”
Response of citrus trees to deficit irrigation during different phenological periods in relation to yield, fruit quality, and water productivity (2010, background): “Irrigation water productivity (IWP) is defined as the ratio of yield to water applied (Seckler, 1996), and can be improved by augmenting yield or reducing crop evapotranspiration (Fereres et al., 2003).”
Adaptation of olive (Olea europaea L.) to water-limited environments (2005, background): “The underlying theory that root signals from the dry part of the root system close stomata and reduce transpiration at high plant water status is physiologically attractive but the critical experiments required to test the hypothesis have yet to be made (Fereres et al. 2003).”