Abstract
Water use efficiency is essential in semiarid regions of Spain, and it can be achieved through a precise knowledge of the real crop water requirements (CWR). The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) offers standardized crop coefficients to establish the CWR. However, these coefficients can change due to different conditions, such as climatic variations and cultivation practices. In this work, the evapotranspiration (ETClys) and crop coefficients (KClys) of bell pepper were obtained with a compact removable weighing lysimeter between February and August for two crop seasons (2019 and 2020). ETClys was determined from the water balance, and the KClys values were determined as the ratio of the crop evapotranspiration, measured on the removable weighing lysimeter, and the reference evapotranspiration. The KClys average values for the bell pepper in the initial, middle, and final stages were 0.57, 1.06, and 0.80, respectively. KC regression models were obtained as a function of the fraction thermal units, achieving a maximum correlation of 0.67 (R2). In general, the KC values obtained in this research work were lower in the initial and in the final stages and larger in the middle stage in comparison with the FAO-56 values and other research works values in semiarid conditions. The bell pepper yield increased by 7.72% in 2019 and by 3.49% in 2020 compared to the yield reported by the Ministry of the Environment and Rural and Marine Areas of the Spanish Government in 2019 and with a minimum water loss through drainage. The results in this work can help farmers to determine the crop water requirements and to improve the system efficiency in semiarid locations with similar conditions to those in the study.
Highlights
The irrigation areas in southeast Spain are characterized by limited water resources due to a semiarid climate
The ETC was affected by irrigation and rainfall events, which increased the soil evaporation, most notably when there was a shorter interval between irrigations
Second- and third-order models were developed for KC as a function of fraction thermal units, based on the data of KC inferred from the lysimeter with determination coefficients greater than 0.60
Summary
The irrigation areas in southeast Spain are characterized by limited water resources due to a semiarid climate. The Mediterranean basin has very hot summers that increase the crop water demand via an increase in the crop evapotranspiration rate [1,2,3]. In the Mediterranean area, Andalusia, Murcia, and Valencia are the three main regions of horticultural production, mostly involving spring–summer crops. The bell pepper production in this area mainly occurs in the Murcia region, where greenhouses reach up to 82% of the total cultivated hectares while open-field cultivation represents only 18%. The average greenhouse yield is 30% higher than the yield of open fields [6].
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