Partial Rootzone Drying to Save Water While Growing Apples in a Semi‐arid Region

Abstract

Water availability represents the main environmental limitation in arid and semi‐arid agro‐ecosystems. In these regions, irrigation water is a scarce and expensive resource for apple and other horticultural production systems. The north‐central part of Mexico, where 70% (≈ 44 thousand hectares) of apples are grown, is such a semi‐arid system. The objective of this research was to determine the impact of partial rootzone drying (PRD) on tree physiology, yield, water use efficiency (WUE), and irrigation water use efficiency of ‘Golden Delicious’ apple trees growing in a semi‐arid region. Treatments were commercial irrigation (CI, as control) and PRD (50% of the irrigation water supplied to CI). The PRD trees had slightly reduced leaf xylem water potential, stomatal conductance, and transpiration rate. Yield, fruit size and quality, vegetative growth, and pruning weight were not modified by the irrigation treatments. Over three years, average WUE increased by 51% under PRD irrigation and water savings were ≈ 3, 240 m3 water per hectare. Therefore, PRD is a potential irrigation technique to make apple production sustainable not only in the semi‐arid regions of Mexico, but also in other regions where water resources are becoming insufficient. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Partial Rootzone Drying Advances Fruit Maturity of Royal Gala Apple

“…Fruit growth pattern was the same between the two treatments because no water stress was developed in PRD trees as previously argued by Zegbe and Serna-Pérez (2012) (Figure 3). Therefore, mean fresh mass, diameter, volume, and dry mass concentration were statistically similar between irrigation treatments (Table 1).…”

“…This corresponds to a midday Ψ leaf of -2.1 to -1.8 MPa (Mills et al, 1996;Mpelasoka et al, 2001). However, as indicated previously, this water stress intensity was not developed in this experiment; which indicates that the wetted part of the root system of PRD trees can equilibrate Ψ leaf even during fruit expansion stage (Zegbe and Serna-Pérez, 2012).…”

Irrigation options to save water while enhancing export‐size fruit and storability of ‘Smooth Red’ cactus pear

“…Crop water use (CWU) was estimated as the added water plus the effective rainfall (ER). ER was considered as a rainfall episode of greater than or equal to 5 mm . Information on Penman‐Monteith reference evapotranspiration (ETo) and other climatological data was obtained from an automated weather station (Adcon Telemetry System) 1 km away from the experimental site.…”

Irrigation Enhances Postharvest Performance of 'Cristalina' Cactus Pear Fruit

“…Throughout the experiment, volumetric soil water content was monitored in all treatments before and 24 h after each irrigation with time domain reflectometry (TDR, Mini-Trase System, Soil Moisture Equipment Corp., Santa Barbara, CA, USA). Irrigation treatments were applied according to soil water balance (Zegbe and Serna, 2012).…”