Ecophysiological and Agronomical Responses of Mediterranean Crops to Drought: Enhancing Soil–Water Management under Water Stress Conditions

A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Water Use and Irrigation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 3103

Special Issue Editors

Plant Biology and Ecology, University of Sevilla, 41012 Sevilla, Spain
Interests: eco-physiology; molecular response to biotic and abiotic stress
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Drought is a growing and productivity problem in Mediterranean crops. Currently, climate change scenarios predict a decrease in precipitation in Mediterranean climates together with an increase in temperatures. Under these conditions, the decrease in water availability, in parallel with the increase in crop evapotranspiration, makes it necessary to implement control and management tools.

In this sense, it is important to study the behavior of crops under drought conditions by means of crop–water status, focusing attention on those processes involved in the gas exchange; photosynthesis rate; and those metabolic pathways related to the crop response to water stress conditions.

Moreover, implementing new tools to assess the crop water status and monitoring the continuous soil–plant–atmosphere system, integrating information systems based on big-data and smart farming tools, will reinforce actual knowledge to offer an appropriate response to the challenges to achieving a higher water use efficiency in irrigated and rainfed systems.

We especially welcome research articles regarding sustainable irrigation management (amount, rate, and intervals) for different crops and environments, deficit irrigation, water stress management, sensor-based irrigation management, ecophysiological responses, and productivity crops under drought stress.

Prof. Alfredo Emilio Rubio Casal
Dr. Ivan Francisco Garcia Tejero
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • crop drought tolerance
  • soil–water management
  • photosynthesis in crop
  • water relation in crop
  • thermography
  • irrigation and soil
  • remote sensing

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 2520 KiB  
Article
Monitoring of Emerging Water Stress Situations by Thermal and Vegetation Indices in Different Almond Cultivars
by Saray Gutiérrez-Gordillo, Javier de la Gala González-Santiago, Emiliano Trigo-Córdoba, Alfredo Emilio Rubio-Casal, Iván Francisco García-Tejero and Gregorio Egea
Agronomy 2021, 11(7), 1419; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/agronomy11071419 - 15 Jul 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2488
Abstract
In recent years, the area dedicated to modern irrigated almond plantations has increased significantly in Spain. However, the legal irrigation allocations are lower than the maximum water requirements of the crop in most cases. Therefore, almond growers are forced to implement regulated deficit [...] Read more.
In recent years, the area dedicated to modern irrigated almond plantations has increased significantly in Spain. However, the legal irrigation allocations are lower than the maximum water requirements of the crop in most cases. Therefore, almond growers are forced to implement regulated deficit irrigation strategies on their farms, applying water stress in certain resistant phenological periods and avoiding it in sensitive periods. Given the need to monitor the water status of the crop, especially in the most sensitive periods to water stress, the objective of this work was to evaluate the sensitivity of two UAV-based crop water status indicators to detect early water stress conditions in four almond cultivars. The field trial was conducted during 2020 in an experimental almond orchard, where two irrigation strategies were established: full irrigation (FI), which received 100% of irrigation requirements (IR), and regulated deficit irrigation (RDI), which received 70% of IR during the whole irrigation period except during the kernel-filling stage when received 40% IR. The UAV flights were performed on four selected dates of the irrigation season. The Crop Water Status Index (CWSI) and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) were derived from thermal and multispectral images, respectively, and compared to classical water status indicators, i.e., stem water potential (Ψstem), stomatal conductance (gs), and photosynthetic rate (AN). Of the four flights performed, three corresponded to mild water stress conditions and a single flight was performed under moderate water stress conditions. Under mild water stress, CWSI was not able to capture the differences between FI and RDI trees that were observed with Ψstem. Under moderate stress conditions, CWSI was sensitive to the water deficit reached in the trees and showed significant differences among both irrigation treatments. No differences were observed in the CWSI and NVDI response to water stress among cultivars. Although NDVI and CWSI were sensitive to water stress, the low signal intensity observed in NDVI makes this index less robust than CWSI to monitor crop water stress. It can be concluded that UAV-based CWSI measurements are reliable to monitor almond water status, although for early (mild) levels of water stress, Ψstem seems to be the preferred option. Full article
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