Pruning and Water Saving Management Effects on Mango High-Density and Mature Orchards

Water is getting scarce and irrigation practices should become more efficient. Mango orchards require great quantities of water, and policies in developing countries are substituting surface gravity irrigation by pressurized systems. A commercial orchard having mature 25-year-old trees and a 10-year...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Agronomy (Basel) 2022-10, Vol.12 (11), p.2623
Main Authors: Hahn, Federico, Valle, Salvador, Navarro-Gómez, Carmen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Canopies
Controllers
Crop yield
deficit irrigation
Developing countries
Evapotranspiration
Fruits
Fuzzy control
High density
Irrigation
Irrigation practices
Irrigation systems
LDCs
mango yield
Mangoes
Mexico
Orchards
precipitation fuzzy algorithm
pruning
Rain
soil capacitance probe
Soil water
Sprinklers
Trees
Water
Water conservation
Water shortages
Water use
water-use efficiency
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Water is getting scarce and irrigation practices should become more efficient. Mango orchards require great quantities of water, and policies in developing countries are substituting surface gravity irrigation by pressurized systems. A commercial orchard having mature 25-year-old trees and a 10-year-old HD high-density section were irrigated with micro sprinklers using 100% ETc (crop evapotranspiration) and reduced deficit irrigation treatments of 75% and 50% ETc. Water soil measurements were made with EC-5 probes at 10 and 35 cm in depth to study the effect of the different irrigation treatments. After the 2020 harvest, mature trees were trimmed without achieving pruning severity greater than 1.3. Canopy volume, mango size, fruit yield and water-use efficiency WUE were analyzed during 2020 and 2021. Sporadic storms produced sprinkler watering problems as weeds proliferated within trees. A controller with a fuzzy algorithm optimized orchard management and saved water in trees without decreasing yield and fruit size. It was found that one year after mature trees were trimmed by taking away the larger internal branch, more light penetrated the canopy, increasing yield by 60%; pruning in HD trees presented a yield increase of 5.37%. WUE (water-use efficiency) also increased with pruning and its value increased to 87.6 when the fuzzy controller and the 50% DI treatments were used in mature trees. This value was 260% greater than the one obtained in pruned trees without the controller. HD trees presented a lower WUE and yield per hectare than mature trees.
ISSN:2073-4395
2073-4395
DOI:10.3390/agronomy12112623