Almond fruit quality can be improved by means of deficit irrigation strategies

Abstract

Water scarcity is considered one of the biggest global risks worldwide, not only because affects every continent but mostly because it can have dramatic impact in a long term. Deficit irrigation strategies can help in coping with this water scarcity and optimizing the water efficiency. Both regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) in moderate and severe levels and sustained deficit irrigation (SDI) were applied in almond nut crop within this study and quality parameters of obtained fruits were analyzed. Almost all morphological and physicochemical parameters were not affected by the water stress. However, statistically significant differences among treatments were observed for the fat content, the highest value being reached by moderate RDI treatment. Besides, differences were also found for total organic acids content, calcium, potassium, manganese and for six fatty acids (myristic, palmitic, margaric, cis-heptadecenoic, cis-vaccenic, and arachidic acids) content. According to experimental findings, it can be concluded that irrigation strategies do not affect almond fruit quality; being possible to increase the final quality of nuts, when moderate RDI is applied.