Response of young super-high density table olive orchard (Manzanilla de Sevilla) to different water stress levels considering an accurate determination of endocarp development

Marta Sánchez-Piñero, Mireia Corell, Alfonso Moriana, David Pérez-López, Laura L. de Sosa, Noemí Medina-Zurita, Pedro Castro-Valdecantos and María José Martín-Palomo

Agricultural Water Management, 2024, vol. 303, issue C

Abstract: Olive trees are extremely drought-resistant species. This particularity could be used to reduce water needs in regulated deficit irrigation scheduling. However, the yield response to water deficit is linked to the moment and the level of water stress imposed. Pit hardening has been commonly used as the stage to decrease irrigation, but it is not measured under field conditions. The aim of this work is to describe the impact of water stress conditions on yield response for table olive trees, considering an accurate determination of the endocarp development. The experiment was performed from the 2020 to the 2023 seasons on a two-year-old super-high density table olive orchard (cv Manzanilla de Sevilla). The three irrigation treatments (six repetitions) were: Control, no water stress conditions throughout the season in 2020 and 2021, and mild water stress to reduce vigour in 2022 and 2023; Regulated deficit irrigation (RDI), based on a moderate to severe water stress during pit hardening, using midday stem water potential measurements; and Rainfed. Endocarp development was established using the pit-breaking pressure throughout the 2021, 2022 and 2023 seasons. Water relations, vegetative growth, number of inflorescence and fruits, yield and fruit quality were measured during the experiment. Crown volume limited yield in Rainfed treatments but not in RDI, compared to Control. The number of inflorescences and inflorescence set was not affected in RDI and Rainfed, only reduced in severe water stress in 2023. RDI presented a similar yield response to Control, with a reduction of 50 % on applied water and a significant more negative midday stem water potential. The Rainfed trees were unsuitable for table production because rehydration did not recover fruit size enough to be commercial. Endocarp maintained the capacity of growing until the end of the season.

Keywords: Fruit size; Inflorescence set; Midday stem water potential; Pit hardening; Stress integral (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377424003792
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:303:y:2024:i:c:s0378377424003792

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2024.109044

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().