Abstract
Irrigation helps grow agricultural crops in dry areas and during periods of inadequate rainfall. Proper irrigation could improve both crop productivity and produce quality. For high density apple orchards, water relations are even more important. Most irrigation in tree fruit orchards is applied based on grower’s experience or simple observations, which may lead to over- or under-irrigation. To investigate an effective irrigation strategy in high-density apple orchard, three irrigation methods were tested including soil moisture-based, evapotranspiration (ET)-based and conventional methods. In soil moisture-based irrigation, soil water content and soil water potential sensors were measured side by side. In ET-based irrigation, daily ET (ETc) and accumulated water deficit were calculated. Conventional method was based on the experience of the operator. The experiment was conducted from early June through middle of October (one growing season). Lastly, water consumption, fruit yield and fruit quality were analyzed for these irrigation strategies. Results indicated that the soil moisture-based irrigation used least water, with 10.8% and 4.8% less than ET-based and conventional methods, respectively. The yield from the rows with the soil moisture-based irrigation was slightly higher than the other two, while the fruit quality was similar. The outcome from this study proved the effectiveness of using soil moisture sensors for irrigation scheduling and could be an important step for future automatic irrigation system.
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The text the model read, with the source record’s inline markup (italics, sub- and superscripts) rendered and its character entities decoded; quote offsets refer to the raw text.
Claims 5
Claim · model-written summary
Soil moisture based irrigation used 10.8% less water than ET based irrigation.
- Taxon
- apple
Malus domesticat0 - Treatment
- soil moisture-based irrigatione0
- Outcome
- watere0
- Direction
- lesse0
- Value
- 10.8%e0
- Comparator
- ET-basede0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“soil moisture-based irrigation used least water, with 10.8% and 4.8% less than ET-based and conventional methods, respectively”
t0“Apple”
Claim · model-written summary
Soil moisture based irrigation used 4.8% less water than conventional irrigation.
- Taxon
- appleMalus domesticat0
- Treatment
- soil moisture-based irrigatione0
- Outcome
- watere0
- Direction
- lesse0
- Value
- 4.8%e0
- Comparator
- conventional methodse0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“soil moisture-based irrigation used least water, with 10.8% and 4.8% less than ET-based and conventional methods, respectively”
t0“Apple”
Claim · model-written summary
Soil moisture based irrigation yielded slightly more fruit than the other two methods.
- Taxon
- appleMalus domesticat0
- Treatment
- soil moisture-based irrigatione0
- Outcome
- yielde0
- Direction
- slightly highere0
- Comparator
- the other twoe0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“The yield from the rows with the soil moisture-based irrigation was slightly higher than the other two”
t0“Apple”
Claim · model-written summary
Fruit quality was similar across irrigation methods.
- Taxon
- appleMalus domesticat0
- Treatment
- soil moisture-based irrigatione1
- Outcome
- fruit qualitye0
- Direction
- similare0
- Comparator
- the other twoe2
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“while the fruit quality was similar”
e1“rows with the soil moisture-based irrigation”
e2“the other two”
t0“Apple”
Claim · model-written summary
The authors concluded soil moisture sensors were effective for irrigation scheduling.
- Taxon
- appleMalus domesticat0
- Outcome
- using soil moisture sensors for irrigation schedulinge0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“effectiveness of using soil moisture sensors for irrigation scheduling”
t0“Apple”
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