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Selected Papers from 38th National Irrigation Congress

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 June 2022) | Viewed by 8086

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Victoriano Martínez-Alvarez

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Guest Editor

Agricultural Engineering Department, Technical University of Cartagena, Cartagena, Spain
Interests: agricultural water management; water desalination for agriculture; irrigation-district management; evaporation; agricultural ponds; evaporation mitigation in reservoirs; water–energy nexus in irrigated agriculture
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Belen Gallego-Elvira

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Guest Editor

Agricultural Engineering Department, Technical University of Cartagena, Paseo Alfonso XIII, 48, 30203 Cartagena, Spain
Interests: irrigation sustainability; water desalination for agriculture; life cycle assessment in agriculture; remote sensing of vegetation; models and decision-support systems

Dr. Martín Eduardo Espósito

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Guest Editor

Agricultural Engineering Department, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahía Blanca, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Interests: agricultural water management; basin management; irrigation water quality; irrigation systems and efficiency; phytoremediation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Population growth, urbanization, climate change and environmental degradation are placing unprecedented pressure on water resources, with a particular impact on irrigated agriculture. Resolving the challenges of the future requires a thorough reconsideration of how water is managed for agricultural supply and crop irrigation. This question is annually addressed in the Spanish National Irrigation Congress series, which brings together Spanish and Latin American researchers and technicians to present and discuss innovations, trends, and solutions for irrigation agronomy and engineering. In this Special Issue, selected papers from the 38^thEdition of the Congress (https://aeryd.es/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Invitacion-para-publicar-articulos-basados-en-las-comunicaciones-del-Congreso-en-un-numero-especial-de-la-revista-Agronomy.pdf) will be considered for publication on the main topics, including: irrigation strategies, methods and technologies; modeling and simulation tools; water–soil–plant–atmosphere relationships; salinity and drainage; environmental impacts; reclaimed and desalinated water for irrigation; effects of irrigation water quality on the soil, crops and aquifers; irrigation infrastructure; water–energy nexus; economic viability assessment.

Prof. Dr. Victoriano Martínez-Alvarez
Dr. Belen Gallego-Elvira
Dr. Martín Eduardo Espósito
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Agronomy
Agricultural water management
Water–energy–food nexus
Irrigation systems
Precision farming
Sustainable agriculture
Water quality
Models and decision-support systems
Environmental impact
Economic viability

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 11657 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Soil Salinity Prediction Using Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems under Semi-Arid Environments Irrigated with Salty Non-Conventional Water Resources

by Francisco Pedrero Salcedo, Pedro Pérez Cutillas, Faissal Aziz, Marina Llobet Escabias, Harm Boesveld, Harm Bartholomeus and Anas Tallou

Agronomy 2022, 12(9), 2022; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy12092022 - 26 Aug 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1923

Abstract

The effects of climate change on food security have been unfavorable, particularly in the area of Murcia where there is a water shortage. To satisfy crop needs, farmers combine several irrigation water sources, such as brackish groundwater, desalinated water, reclaimed water, and desalinated water. Good agricultural and irrigation practices are essential for preventing soil salinization and production losses, and remote sensing might be used to evaluate these practices. This research, performed in an experimental field under greenhouse conditions and in an open-air commercial lettuce field irrigated with non-conventional water sources, determined that the Salinity Index (SI) applied to bare soil is a useful spectral index, providing an R² range of 0.40 to 0.83. The other metric used to the bare soil, the Normalized Difference Salinity Index (NDSI), exhibited poor correlations, with R² values as high as 0.49. Moreover, the thermal camera did not operate well within the greenhouse, but it performed in the commercial plot, where the canopy temperature was linearly correlated, with an R² value of 0.50. The second analyzed vegetative metric, the Normalized Difference Plants Index (NDVI), was exclusively applied to the vegetation and showed minimal relationships with the soil salinity. In the visual evaluation of the maps, the temperature patterns of the canopy were strikingly comparable to the electrical conductivity of the soil, which was not the case for the other analyzed indices. The use of non-conventional moderately saline irrigation water sources negatively impacts the lettuce development by decreasing the fresh head weight and increasing the sodium and chloride leaf concentrations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from 38th National Irrigation Congress)

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15 pages, 308 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Economic Assessment of Irrigation with Desalinated Seawater in Greenhouse Tomato Production in SE Spain

by David Martínez-Granados, Patricia Marín-Membrive and Javier Calatrava

Agronomy 2022, 12(6), 1471; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy12061471 - 18 Jun 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1658

Abstract

This study assesses the impact of irrigating with desalinated seawater (DSW) on the profitability of greenhouse tomato in south-eastern Spain, comparing different water-quality sources in both traditional sanding cultivation and soilless hydroponic production. The assessment is based on the combination of partial crop budgeting techniques with field data from the LIFE DESEACROP Project experimental activities. Our results show that the exclusive use of DSW for tomato production increases fertilization costs by 20% in soilless systems and by 34% in traditional sanding cultivation, and water costs by 30% in soilless systems and by 48% in traditional soil cultivation. As a result, production costs increase by 5% in soilless cultivation and 3% in soil cultivation, increases that are reduced when DSW is blended with brackish water. However, the lower salinity of DSW, compared with conventional water resources in the area, increases both crop yield and profitability. Soilless cultivation would also increase tomato profitability but only if good quality water is available. The materialization of the potential benefits of soilless production requires improving water quality through the increased use of DSW. Otherwise, the traditional sanding production system, better adapted to the area’s poor soils and bad quality water, would be more profitable. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from 38th National Irrigation Congress)

19 pages, 2390 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Prediction of Water Stress Episodes in Fruit Trees Based on Soil and Weather Time Series Data

by Juan D. González-Teruel, Maria Carmen Ruiz-Abellon, Víctor Blanco, Pedro José Blaya-Ros, Rafael Domingo and Roque Torres-Sánchez

Agronomy 2022, 12(6), 1422; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy12061422 - 13 Jun 2022

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 1817

Abstract

Water is a limited resource in arid and semi-arid regions, as is the case in the Mediterranean Basin, where demographic and climatic conditions make it ideal for growing fruits and vegetables, but a greater volume of water is required. Deficit irrigation strategies have proven to be successful in optimizing available water without pernicious impact on yield and harvest quality, but it is essential to control the water stress of the crop. The direct measurement of crop water status is currently performed using midday stem water potential, which is costly in terms of time and labor; therefore, indirect methods are needed for automatic monitoring of crop water stress. In this study, we present a novel approach to indirectly estimate the water stress of 15-year-old mature sweet cherry trees from a time series of soil water status and meteorological variables by using Machine Learning methods (Random Forest and Support Vector Machine). Time information was accounted for by integrating soil and meteorological measurements within arbitrary periods of 3, 6 and 10 days. Supervised binary classification and regression approaches were applied. The binary classification approach allowed for the definition of a model that alerts the farmer when a dangerous crop water stress episode is about to happen a day in advance. Performance metrics F2 and recall of up to 0.735 and 0.769, respectively, were obtained. With the regression approach a R² of up to 0.817 was achieved. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from 38th National Irrigation Congress)

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15 pages, 2031 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Sustainability of Irrigation Strategies in Traditional Olive Orchards

by Juan Carlos Molina-Moral, Alfonso Moriana-Elvira and Francisco José Pérez-Latorre

Agronomy 2022, 12(1), 64; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy12010064 - 28 Dec 2021

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1791

Abstract

Olive trees are one of the few alternative crops available for farmers in arid environments. In many of these regions, surface irrigation is increasing. The aim of this study was to estimate the pattern of water soil reserves through the season considering different climatic scenarios, limitations in irrigation scheduling, and irrigation systems. Modeling was performed with the most common type of soil, and a tree density of 10 × 10 m was used. Three different climatic scenarios were estimated using eighteen agroclimatic stations along the zone (Jaén, Spain). In these climatic scenarios, different irrigation strategies were considered. First, the percentages of maximum flow available (100%, 50%, and 33%) were used. In each of these flows, the days available for irrigation were considered: daily irrigation (IDD), 20 days per month (ID20), and no irrigation, during August (RDI). The results suggest that a 33% flow strategy, the most common in the surveyed area, would produce the greatest water-stress period in the most sensitive phenological stage. However, 100%, in all scenarios, and 50% (only IDD and RDI) would obtain the best water status. According to the estimated water applied, 50% was the most advisable strategy. However, in a minimum rainfall scenario, water needs could be excessive. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from 38th National Irrigation Congress)

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