Continuous determination of fruit tree water-status by plant-based sensors

2017

Recently, climate change has caused shortages of water worldwide, especially in semi-arid and arid regions. Several irrigation strategies have been studied with the aim of saving water overuse in agriculture. In the past most of the attention was directed towards soil water content, but recently the focus has moved to plant responses to water deficit. In recent years, crop evapotranspiration (ETc) obtained from reference evapotranspiration (ET0) and crop coefficients (Kc), has become common for irrigation scheduling in several crops, but it does not provide precise insights on the tree water status. Today an increasing focus is being given to plant-based sensors for the continuous monitorin…