Abstract
Increasing agricultural systems’ resource efficiency is the key action for producing adequate food quantities in semi-arid Mediterranean regions while coping with water scarcity, environmental constraints and economic issues. Optimisation of irrigation and fertigation practices imposes different approaches, considering plant-water-soil relationships based on prevailing greenhouse microclimatic conditions, ensuring optimal production per drop of water and unit of fertiliser. In the content of "precision agricultural farming systems", nutrient uptake modelling, phyto-sensing, smart and sustainable technologies must be applied for monitoring and evaluating water and nutrients crops supply. However, in many cases, the use of irrigation and fertigation recipes given in the literature may not be compatible in the Mediterranean, as they usually originated based on northern European climatic conditions. The objective of this work is an attempt to understand various aspects of irrigation and fertigation management in vegetable fruiting crops such as tomato and cucumber towards nutrients and water resource sustainability in Mediterranean greenhouses.
Highlights
The sustainability of irrigated agriculture in the semi-arid Mediterranean region is threatening by overexploitation of natural resources, and changes in agricultural land use.Agriculture is the dominant water consumer in the region accounting for 81% of total water use; it is vulnerable to climate conditions due to its dependence, for most of the year, on adequate quantities of good-quality water [1,2]
The semi-arid Mediterranean region has been classified as a global climate change hot spot, already witnessing the impacts of climate change, including a significant decrease in precipitation and an increase in mean air temperatures values
Crop yield is significantly affected by the quality of groundwater, it has been of great economic and environmental concern
Summary
The sustainability of irrigated agriculture in the semi-arid Mediterranean region is threatening by overexploitation of natural resources, and changes in agricultural land use. The European Union (EU) have recently adopted the EU 2020/74 regulation on the minimum requirements for water reuse, aiming at promoting TWW reuse in agriculture and ensuring environmental protection, human and animal health and simultaneously supporting adaptation to climate change and promoting circular economy. TWW is reused for the irrigation or fertigation of high-value crops including tomato and cucumber [10,11]. Considering the above facts and the United Nations agenda for adaptation to climate change and sustainable development promoting circular economy and zero-pollution, we acknowledge that greenhouse cultivation in the Mediterranean region faces unique challenges. The objective of this work was to make a better understanding of various aspects of irrigation and fertigation management of fruiting crops such as tomatoes and cucumbers widely grown in Mediterranean greenhouses towards nutrients and water resources sustainability
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