Irrigation management is a key farmer practice for a more efficient nitrate use: a case study in an intensive open field endive crop
The main source of nitrogen for most cultivated plants is nitrate.
Agriculture has overused this nutrient, which has led to serious environmental problems in various parts of the world.
The common practice in open intensive horticultural fields where soil has a high water retention capacity (e.g., high percentage of clay or silt) is irrigate two or three times per week.
Technically and logistically, this is much easier than scheduling one or more irrigation events per day.
This experiment was conducted across two cultivation cycles in an open field endive crop under plastic mulch.
We contrasted three irrigation strategies based on different frequency of irrigation events; 2 or 3 irrigations events per week, 1 irrigation event per day, or 3 irrigation events per day.
The three irrigation strategies applied equal water and fertilizers doses.
The results demonstrated that high irrigation frequency (3 events per day) increased shoot fresh weight (harvest yield), decreased nitrate concentration in the leaves (reducing risk to human health) and decreased nitrate concentrations below the root zone (prone to leaching). Therefore, the strategy of high frequency irrigation (three irrigations per day) or in some cases one irrigation per day, increases the efficient use of nitrate by increasing its use by the plant and therefore decreasing losses outside the agricultural system.
The promising results obtained should now be corroborated under different soil management strategies and textures where soil evaporation might be a more important component of field water balance.
Barth, A., Abbatantuono, F., Ruiz-García, J.L., Hortelano, D., Martínez, R.M., Parra, M., Intrigliolo, D.S. and Rubio-Asensio, J.S. (2023). Irrigation management is a key farmer practice for a more efficient nitrate use: a case study in an intensive open field endive crop. Acta Hortic. 1375, 331-336
DOI: 10.17660/ActaHortic.2023.1375.43
https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2023.1375.43
DOI: 10.17660/ActaHortic.2023.1375.43
https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2023.1375.43
nitrate, ammonium, leaching, water-use efficiency, muskmelon, endive
English
1375_43
331-336