Water use, water use efficiency, crop coefficient and yield of olive trees as affected by irrigation regimes

Abstract EN

Two field experiments were carried out during two successive seasons of 1991 and 1992 under the conditions of Fayoum governorate, Egypt.

The objective was to study the water use (WU), water use efficiency (WUE), crop coefficients (Kc) and yield of three olive cultivars namely Mission, Dermellaly and Khodairy at three irrigation regimes (60 %, 40 % and 20 % of available soil water).

When trees were irrigated at 60% available soil water, Kc values were 0.70, 0.69 and 0.68 for Mission, Dermallaly and Khodairy cvs, respectively.

These crop coefficients indicated that Mission cultivar, had the largest water use (4830 m3 / acre / year) followed by descending order by Dermallaly cultivar (4755 m3 / acre / year) and Khodairy cultivar (4726 m3 / acre / year).

The highest yield was achieved on the trees irrigated at 60 % available soil water, whereas the lowest yield was obtained with trees irrigated at 20 % available soil water and crop coefficients (Kc) was 0.55 for the three olive cultivars used in this study.