Abstract
Trees irrigation is one of the major activities because the fruit production is proportional to water use. The current decrease of water resources leads to the urgent need to adopt a strategy which could be applied to efficiently utilize water without affecting the growth, yield and fruit quality. Therefore, deficit irrigation is an alternative. The crop studied was apricot, 'Orizont' cultivar, 13 years old, grafted on the 'Constanta 14' rootstock. The planting distance was 4 m between the rows and 5 m between trees on the row. The split-plot experiment described here is monofactorial with irrigation strategy having three graduations. The irrigation regime consists of a fully irrigated treatment (b1, non-stressed) according to the irrigation needs (100% of ETc = ETo x Kc), a deficit irrigation treatment (b2) irrigated with half the amount of water in b1 (50% of ETc), and a control, non-irrigated treatment (b3). These plots comprised three adjacent fruit tree rows, with the central row containing five trees for measurements and observations. This research aims to study the effects of deficit irrigation on some quality indicators of apricot fruits after harvest and storage. Fruits in the b3 treatment were much firmer, followed by the fruits from the b2 treatment. The study suggests that moderate deficit irrigation can be profitable for enhancing key fruit quality characteristics.
Highlights
Drought is one of the main serious problems for fruit production
The fruit yield reduced in Deficit irrigation (DI) system by size and weight reduction of fruit, but quality parameters, such as sugars, ascorbic acid, and anthocyanin contents in fruit increased by water restrictions (Roccuzzo et al, 2014)
Irrigation application was usually carried out in b1 when soil water content (SWC) was about to reach the mid-interval between field capacity (FC) and wilting point (WP)
Summary
Drought is one of the main serious problems for fruit production. Improving water efficiency is a major goal for sustainable fruit growing. Deficit irrigation (DI) is a technique that irrigates the entire root zone with less evapotranspiration and leads to reduce the irrigation water use with maintaining farmers net profits (Hoffman et al, 1990). The effects of water deficit on fruit quality depend on the intensity and duration of the water stress period and on the sequence in which the water deficits occur, as well as on cultivar (Castel and Buj, 1990). Apricot fruits are popular worldwide owing to their high nutritional value and delicious flavor, which can be used as fresh fruit and has a high importance as processed product (Moradinezhad and Jahani, 2016). This research aims to study the effects of deficit irrigation on some quality indicators of apricot fruits after harvesting and storage
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