25 Mar 2023
Lemon covered in water

Mid-long term effects of saline reclaimed water and regulated deficit irrigation on fruit quality of citrus

Non-conventional water sources and water saving techniques can become a valuable implement in semiarid regions, although its long-term effects on the citrus quality are little known. This study evaluated the effects of irrigation with two sources: transfer water (TW) and reclaimed water (RW) combined with two irrigation strategies: full irrigation (FI) and regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) on fruit quality response of mandarins and grapefruits during eight growth seasons. RESULTS: The RW irrigation in mandarin, without water restriction, determined maturity index (MI, SSC·TA-1) lower than in the TW-FI, owing to titratable acidity (TA) increased to a greater degree than soluble solid contents (SSC). Nevertheless, juice quality standards were satisfied. Besides, regardless of the irrigation treatment (FI or RDI), an increasing trend fruit weight was also detected by RW.

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25 Nov 2022
Regulated deficit irrigation Clementina de Nules

Long-term response of ‘Clementina de Nules’ citrus trees to summer regulated deficit irrigation

Regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) has been assessed in a wide number of fruit crops. However, few are the studies dealing with long-term RDI strategies. In this work, we assessed the response of ‘Clementinade Nules’ citrus trees to summer RDI treatments [RDI-1, irrigated at 50% of crop evapotranspiration (ETc)and RDI-2, irrigated at 35% ETc] during six consecutive seasons (2007–2012). Although water restrictions were applied according to reductions over ETc, threshold values of stem water potential (−1.3 to −1.5 MPain the RDI-1 treatment and −1.5 to −1.7 MPa in the RDI-2) were also considered for scheduling deficitirrigation. Results showed that the water stress imposed in the RDI-2 treatment had a noticeable impacton fresh fruit weight, reducing yield and economic return over the six years and more so during the first two years in comparison to a control treatment irrigated at 100% ETc during the whole season. The RDI-1strategy had a lower impact than the RDI-2 treatment on the fresh fruit weight and did not significantly reduce yield or the economic return over the six seasons.

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28 Apr 2021
Lane Late Citrus

Response of Navel Lane Late citrus trees to regulated deficit irrigation: Yield components and fruit composition

The aim of this study was to determine how regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) would affect the yield and fruit quality parameters at harvest for lane late Navel during the summer month / fruit growth phase 2. The final fruit size of all RDI treatments were smaller compared to the control, however, The first treatment of 50% ET0 had the best internal quality fruit with higher total soluble solids and acids. The latter treatment had a 19% yield reduction due to fruit size.

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