SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE "ENARENADO ALMERIENSE" FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SOIL WATER BALANCE SUBROUTINE; A DYNAMIC SIMULATION APPROACH.

Many of these programs, such as CERES-Maize, ARID CROP, etc…, incorporate to their modular estructure a soil water balance as one of the main subroutines, which makes possible to predict, in interaction with plant variables, ecophysiological processes such as evaporation, transpiration, water stress effects on crop growth and yield, water flow to and from the groundwater, and at the same time allowing irrigation scheduling to take place. For this purpose soil physical properties, weather data, irrigation volumes and frequency, must be well known, as they are great part of the inputs needed to run the models.

In this study the special characteristics of the so called "enarenado almeriense" are analyzed in order to develop a subroutine of the soil water balance that could be integrated in various models of horticultural crops under plastic in the south of Spain, such as pepper, tomato, aubergine, etc….