Review
Irrigation scheduling from stem diameter variations: A review

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Abstract

Precise irrigation is essential in arid and semi-arid areas where water is scarce. This has impelled the scientific community to develop new technologies for scheduling irrigation. Of these, the ones relying on plant-based water-stress indicators have been found to have the greatest potential. Thus, measurements of stem water content, canopy temperature, sap flow, and stem diameter variation (SDV), among other variables, have proved useful not only for research purposes, but also for precise irrigation scheduling in commercial orchards. In this work we focus on the use of SDV records for irrigation scheduling. Of those mentioned above, this is the water-stress indicator that has received most attention from the scientific community, in terms of its potential for irrigating commercial orchards. Apart from being capable of an early detection of water stress, even if this is mild, SDV can be continuously and automatically recorded. This is a clear advantage over conventional indicators such as stem water potential (Ψstem). Among the SDV-derived indices that are useful for scheduling irrigation, the maximum daily shrinkage (MDS) and stem growth rate (SGR) are the most widely used. For young trees, and in periods of rapid stem growth, SGR could be a better indicator than MDS. In periods of negligible growth, however, SGR cannot be used as an indicator of plant water stress. Considerable differences in both MDS and SGR as a function of crop load have been reported for some species. It has been found, that SDV outputs are affected by seasonal growth patterns, crop load, plant age and size, and other factors, apart from water stress. Thus, expert interpretation of SDV records is required before using them for scheduling irrigation, which limits their potential for automating the calculation of the irrigation dose. For some species, the MDS vs Ψstem relationships show diurnal hysteresis and seasonal changes. Some relationships also shown an increase of MDS as the plant water potential fell to a certain value, after which MDS decreases as the plant water potential became more negative. This has been reported for peach, lemon, grapevine and olive, among other species. Although SDV-derived indices show a high plant-to-plant variability, in most cases the signal intensity is high enough to achieve an acceptable sensitivity, which, for peach, lemon and pepper has been found to greater than that of Ψstem and leaf conductance (gl). In plum, apple and grapevine, however, Ψstem is more sensitive than MDS and SGR. In any case, the usefulness of an SDV-derived index for irrigation scheduling must be evaluated for the orchard conditions. In this work we describe the qualities that must be considered in such evaluation. One of them, the signal intensity, is being successfully used to schedule low-frequency irrigation in orchards of a variety of species, for both full- and deficit-irrigation treatments. When combined with aerial or satellite imaging, SDV measurements are useful for scheduling irrigation in large orchards with high crop-water-stress variability.

Section snippets

Towards precise irrigation scheduling

Fruit tree orchards are common in arid and semi-arid areas where water for irrigation is scarce. This, together with an increasing world population that has to be fed and with other water-using sectors competing for the limited water resources, makes the use of precise irrigation techniques in those orchards unavoidable. The response of the scientific community to this challenge has been to invest a substantial amount of research in the development of deficit irrigation approaches (Goodwin and

Fundamentals

There is a substantial amount of literature on the fundamentals of stem diameter variations (SDV). When transpiration (Ep) begins early in the morning, a tension is created in the xylem from the evaporative surface of the leaves to every organ of the plant. Part of the water stored in the plant tissues during the night is then lost, allowing the plant to respond rapidly to changes in atmospheric demand, without the need to rely on water uptake by the roots, which starts later (Hinckley and

SDV and water potential

Values of Ψstem are widely used to assess the plant water status, because of their reliability, low variability, and relatively good prediction of yield response to water stress (Shackel et al., 1997, Naor, 2006). In fact, Ψstem is considered to be more sensitive than other indicators such as stomatal conductance (gs) and net CO2 assimilation rate (A), at least for moderate water deficits (Goldhamer et al., 1999, Moriana and Fereres, 2002). Their measurements cannot, however, be easily

Difficulties for interpreting SDV records

Interpreting SDV records for irrigation scheduling is, in most cases, far from straightforward. In fact, expert supervision is usually required when using SDV records for irrigation scheduling. This is one limitation of SDV-derived indices for automating irrigation; another is that SDV does not depend solely on water stress, as we have just mentioned. Below, we detail to what extent plant characteristics and crop management affect the reliability of SDV records. Additional causes are mentioned

Irrigation scheduling from SDV records

The use of SDV records for irrigation scheduling was first proposed by Hendrickson and Veihmeyer (1941). A device which used the relationship between SDV and the water status of fruit trees to control irrigation was patented by the French Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) in 1984 (Huguet et al., 1992). Huguet (1985), Li et al. (1989), Schoch et al. (1989), Li and Huguet (1990), Pelloux et al. (1990), and Huguet et al. (1992) used SDV records for irrigation scheduling. Garnier

Conclusions

SDV measurements have great potential for scheduling irrigation in commercial orchards of grapevines and fruit trees, although several factors can easily affect the usefulness of the SDV-derived indices when the method is not properly used. First, robust and reliable LVDT sensors and related equipment for data collection and transmission, suitable for operating in the field for the whole irrigation season, are available on the market. In most cases, however, little care is taken to prevent

Acknowledgements

Drs. A. Moriana, D. Intrigliolo, and A. Torrecillas clarified some of our doubts on how to handle SDV records, and sent us valuable comments and suggestions. Dr. A. Diaz-Espejo helped us with ecophysiological concepts, and Dr. E. Chacón with mathematical aspects. The experiments made by the authors were funded by the Consejería de Innovación, Ciencia y Empresas of the Junta de Andalucía (research projects C03-056 and ECOSAT), and by the EU research project ref. STREP 023120. We thank the

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