Development of an irrigation scheduling recommendation for pomegranate trees (Punica granatum)

Pomegranate culture in Spain is concentrated in the south east, where water available is scarce. There is a need for providing growers with some irrigation recommendations for improving water use efficiency. For this purpose, information from indicators of the continuous soil-plant-atmosphere is being used in a commercial drip irrigated pomegranate orchard, for delivering to growers a weekly irrigation recommendation, taking into account the reference evapotranspiration, plant water status determined via stem water potential measurements and the soil water available to plant obtained from capacitance probes that measured soil water content at different depths. Watering recommendations are calculated in order to fulfil crop water requirements and also avoid water percolation. The average annual water application has been around 425 mm. The information obtained has been transferred by means of an experimental crop coefficient (Kc) integrated in a dissemination tool for calculating water crops requirements. Experimental Kc values increased from 0.32 in March to 0.74 in July, decreasing to 0.42 in November