irrigation

This report focuses on eight fruit crops (apricot, avocado, mango, fig, litchi, peach, nectarine, and pistachio) and two vegetable crops (artichoke and sweet potato). The requirements for each crop including climate, soil and water are listed in Appendix I. Some of these crops (i.e. apricot, peach, nectarine, and pistachio) require a specific chilling period to stimulate fruiting. Since different varieties have different chilling requirements, care must be taken to select the right variety for each area according to their chill hours.

In recent years, one of the most important problems of pistachio growing is increasing the salinity of soil and water which has decreased the quality and quantity of this crop. In this study, the effect of different levels of salinity on growth of pistachio rootstock cv. Badami Zarand has been evaluated. Pistachio seeds were planted in pots containing loamy sand soil and the salinity treatments were performed four weeks after germination.

Irrigation is a required management practice in pistachio nut production for higher quality and quantity. A proper irrigation management technique that maintains an optimum soil moisture and environment in the root zone increases yield of the pistachio nut tree. Since pistachio tree on the Pistacia vera rootstock does not tolerate excess water in the root zone, over-irrigation must be avoided. In the determination of water requirement of pistachio tree, pan evaporation is commonly used due to its simplicity.

AgroStrat foresees a well designed water sampling campaign in order to assess the quality of water used for irrigation in Aegina. Water samples are collected from many different sites every two months. The results of the 1st water sampling campaing, which took place in January 2013 indicate that the water samples have very high concentration of chloride ions, while the values of Electrical Conductivity for the most of the samples are higher than 3000μS/cm. High nitrates content was also measured for some of the samples.