WATER SHORTAGE AND EFFICIENT WATER USE IN HORTICULTURE

Abstract

The lack of water in many agricultural areas justifies the increasing pressure from other water-use sectors to optimize irrigation practices. The answer from the scientific community to this challenge is the development of new approaches and techniques for a more efficient use of water in commercial horticulture. Here we address what we believe are major research topics supporting some of the latest achievements in this field. First, improving our knowledge on crop water relations is crucial for saving water and increasing the water use efficiency by plants. This not only helps us to identify key mechanisms controlling the use of water by the crop; it also allows us to build mechanistic models that can be used as tools to improve crop production systems and management. In addition, it provides us with the required knowledge to develop deficit irrigation strategies, which are compulsory in many areas where water for irrigation is scarce. The use of low quality water for irrigation is also becoming common in those areas. Therefore, the study of its effects both on soils and crops is increasingly relevant. We finally consider remote sensing techniques that are being developed for dealing with the high variability normally found in big, heterogeneous commercial systems: these new tools improve the sampling procedures, both of the soil and plant water status, and allows us to identify quickly and with minimum labor resources for the within-farm variability of crop water status. Both applications greatly improve the efficiency of the irrigation practice in commercial horticulture.