Citrus species are frequently subjected to water and saline stresses worldwide. We evaluated the effects of diurnal changes in the evaporative demands and soil water contents on the plant physiology of grapefruit and mandarin crops under saline reclaimed (RW) and transfer (TW) water conditions, combined with two irrigation strategies, fully irrigated (fI) and non-irrigated (nI). The physiological responses were different depending on the species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClimate change is one of the main challenges facing the agricultural sector as it strives to meet global food needs. In arid and semiarid areas, the scarcity of water imposes the use of alternative sources - such as reclaimed water (RW) or desalinated water (DW) - and of deficit irrigation strategies, such as regulated deficit irrigation (RDI), in order to maintain productivity. The impact of both alternative water sources and RDI strategies on soil microbial communities in conjunction with the crop response has been little studied, and far less in fruit trees.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe 70% worldwide surface of olive orchards is irrigated. The evaluation of non-conventional water resources and water-saving techniques has gained importance during the last decades in arid and semiarid environments. This study evaluated the effects of irrigation with two water sources: low-cost water DEsalination and SEnsoR Technology (DESERT) desalinated water (DW) EC ∼1 dS m) and reclaimed water (RW) (EC ∼ 3 dS m) combined with two irrigation strategies: full irrigation (FI) (100% of ET) and regulated deficit irrigation (RDI, 50% of ET) on fruit yield, ripening indices, and oil yield and quality of olive trees cv Arbosana planted in Mediterranean conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Non-conventional water sources and water-saving techniques can be valuable in semi-arid regions, although their long-term effects on citrus quality are little known. This study evaluated the effects of irrigation with two sources, transfer water (TW) and reclaimed water (RW), combined with two irrigation strategies, full irrigation (FI) and regulated deficit irrigation (RDI), on fruit quality of mandarins and grapefruits during eight growth seasons.
Results: Reclaimed water irrigation in mandarin, without water restriction, influenced maturity index (MI) less than TW-FI, because titratable acidity (TA) increased to a greater degree than soluble solid contents (SSC).
In this paper, the influence of sample pressure on benzene measurements obtained with two automated in situ gas chromatographs is studied. The analysers were calibrated using a non-linear regression at 293 ± 1 K and 101.3 ± 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The change in light intensity that takes place when an ambient air sample is drawn into the detection chamber of a chemiluminescence monitor generates changes in the concentrations of several species, such as NO(2), NO and O(3). Although this phenomenon has been known for several decades, there is still no commonly accepted approach on when or how to correct for it in NO(2) and O(3) readings.
Discussion: In this work, we have assessed the expanded uncertainty of two chemiluminescence NO( x ) analysers commercially available according to EN 14211:2005, with the aim of establishing the maximum allowable standard uncertainty due to the reaction between NO and O(3) in the sampling system.