Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Impact of Subsurface Drip Irrigation on Water Distribution, Photosynthetic Production and Crop Yield in Olive Orchard in Southern Tunisia

2022; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-030-72543-3_37

2522-8722

Abderrahman Sghaier, Dalenda Boujnah, Mohamed Ouessar, Rayda Ben Ayed, Kamel Naggaz,

Horticultural and Viticultural Research

A two-year study was conducted to evaluate the physiological and biological effects of the introduction of an SDI system on adult olive tree in a 58-year-old olive (Olea europaea L. cv. Zarrazi) orchard located at Bir-lahmar, Tataouine, Tunisia. Irrigation was applied every three days at 3 am, by an automatic subsurface drip irrigation system with four (3.8 L h−1) dripper per tree buried at a depth of 0.6 m. The water salinity was 1.5 g L−1. Net photosynthetic production and soil water content were monitored regularly during the experiment. Soil characteristics were analyzed at the beginning of the experiment. Olive production and olive-oil production were measured at the end every year. Irrigated trees reached more than 60% higher photosynthesis production than rainfed ones. In the second year only, irrigated trees produced olives. The wetting pattern showed that most of irrigation water was delivered to the deep soil layer. As well, the system appeared efficient in distributing the water horizontally.