Irrigation water management for sustainable cultivation of date palm

Abstract Given the aesthetic, cultural, ecological, and economic value of the date agro-system in Southwestern Tunisia, different management and conservation strategies have been warrantee to optimize land productivity sustainably. However, the inefficiency of the adopted management actions resulted in a continuous loss of soil fertility and decreasing fruit quality. Thus, the present paper attempts to evaluate accurately the evolution of the principal factors influencing date palm production and agricultural activities sustainability in the region. Integrated approaches of various irrigation water quality indices and geostatistical analysis coupled with field investigation and farming survey were applied to evaluate the evolution of key parameters influencing the development of date palm sustainably. The obtained results of the research indicate that the progressive land degradation is due to the effects of poorquality of water used for irrigation (EC between 674.4 and 5450 µs/cm, SAR exceeding locally 20 and about 80% of all the samples waters are of undoubtful quality according to the calculated indices), inappropriate irrigation scheduling (physiologic drought that might reach 3 months), traditional basin irrigation technique (decreasing of yield productivity, locally of 0.23, 0.23 and 0.25 kg m−3), an indigenous knowledge (sandy amendment, biologic compost, gravity improved irrigation…..). Also climate variability has leaded to furthermore degradation of crop quality. The degradation of date palm culture will be a great challenge for environmental conservation, food security and socio-economic values of the region unless a reasonable management take place, a flexible strategy based on indigenous knowledge of landowner, and scientific-based outlines with climate risks evaluation. The present paper might be useful to policy makers as a multi-disciplinary research covering most of the important aspects of date palm production