Abstract
For three consecutive years (2015–2017), two deficit irrigation (DI) strategies were used in a 12-year old vineyard (cv. ‘Crimson Seedless’) to implement a sustainable irrigation protocol according to the available water for the farmer. Four different irrigation treatments were assessed: (i) Control (CTL), irrigated to satisfy the maximum crop water requirements throughout the entire growing season; two DI treatments irrigated as CTL except during post-veraison, when the vines were irrigated at 50% CTL: (ii) Regulated Deficit Irrigation (RDI); and (iii) Partial Root Drying (PRD), alternating the wet and dry sides of the root zone, and (iv) irrigated according to the criteria followed by the farmer (FARM), and conditioned by the availability of water each season. The DI strategies resulted in a 50% increase in water use efficiency in the first two years and 81% during the third year. Weekly deficit irrigation protocols are proposed, which specify a maximum difference of 0.22 MPa of midday stem water potential with respect to well-watered vines for a range of irrigation water availabilities between 4000 and 7000 m3 ha−1. An applied water prediction model based on the Gaussian regression using day of the year and maximum temperature of the day is also proposed.
Highlights
Water scarcity has become a global problem, in Mediterranean areas with high climatic demands and low rainfall, often less than 250 mm per year [1], where the negative effects of climate change could be accentuated
The results showed that values lower values of 4000 m3 ha−1 and greater than 8000 m3 ha−1 of water applied did not guarantee the best berry weight nor total yield
Temperature (T), relative humidity (RH), rainfall and other climatic parameters were recorded with an automatic weather station of the Servicio de Información Agraria de Murcia [22] located
Summary
Water scarcity has become a global problem, in Mediterranean areas with high climatic demands and low rainfall, often less than 250 mm per year [1], where the negative effects of climate change could be accentuated. Water storage is a major environmental challenge which can limit the expansion of irrigated agriculture and economic development [1]. Water scarcity has negative consequences at large-scale irrigation communities, which may have many difficulties every year for obtaining the fresh water needed at the whole farm level during growing seasons. In places where available water does not meet a crop’s water requirements, farmers must distribute it appropriately throughout the growing cycle to maintain the sustainability of their farms. To deal with the scarcity of water availability, water-saving agricultural countermeasures must be adopted [5]. The most common methods for applying DI strategies to optimize water resources are Regulated Deficit Irrigation (RDI) [6], and Partial
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