1999. Revista Chapingo Serie Horticultura 5: 191-194.

NOTA CIENTIFICA

 

 

SEASONAL WATER REQUIREMENTS OF AVOCADO TREES GROWN UNDER SUBTROPICAL CONDITIONS

 

J.E. Hoffman; S.F. du Plessis

Agricultural Research Council, Institute for Tropical and Subtropical Crops, Private Bag X11208, Nelspruit 1200.  Rep. of South Africa.  Yvette@itsc.agric.za

 

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the seasonal water requirements of ‘Fuerte’ and ‘Hass’ avocados grown under subtropical conditions and to establish the effect of a water stress during certain fruit growth phases on yield and fruit size.

According to Lahav and Kalmar (1977) avocados grown under winter rainfall conditions in Israel need only 6680 m³·ha^-1·annum^-1.  They are, however, only irrigating 8 months per year, unlike South Africa where irrigation is needed all year round.  Gustafson et al. (1979) in California found that 6 yr old avocado trees needed 7875 m³·ha^-1·annum^-1 with micro irrigation and a maximum of 115 R water·tree^-1·day^-1 in summer.  According to Adato and Levinson (1988) ‘Fuerte’ performed better with their drier treatment than the wetter treatment.

Robertson (1969) indicated the first 70 days after fruitset of ‘Fuerte’ to be the most critical for a water stress.  A water stress during the second phase of fruit growth will result in smaller fruit.  This was confirmed by Bower (1985) and he also stated that a soil matric potential of -55 kPa at 250 mm depth on a clayey soil should not be exceeded.  Whiley et al. (1988) recommended that tensiometer readings of -40 kPa at 300 mm depth on a clay loam soil, during spring, should not be exceeded, whereas this value should be lowered to -30 kPa during the second fruit drop period (December/January).  A study by Vuthapanich et al. (1995) showed that well watered ‘Hass’ trees (-20 kPa) on a clay loam soil had twice the yield of drier treatments (-40 and -70 kPa at a soil depth of 300 mm) due to more fruit per tree (no effect on fruit mass).  Faber et al. (1995), using ‘Hass’ trees stated that different irrigation treatments only show an effect on accumulative yield in the fourth year.  Their best treatment was 70 % of reference evapotranspiration (Eto) with the wettest treatment 111 % of Eto giving the largest trees, but the lowest yield.

From this short overview it can be seen that irrigation or a water stress had an effect on yield and sometimes also on fruit size of avocados.  However, the matric potentials given are different for different textured soils, without relating it to the availability of water in the soil and referring mainly to the topsoil (0 to 300 mm depth).  The applicability of these data are thus doubtful because the extent of water stress is not defined in terms of available water in the soil profile or root zone.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

‘Fuerte’ and ‘Hass’ trees on ‘Duke 7’ rootstocks were planted in two blocks during March 1998 at the Burgershall Experimental Station on a deep red clayey soil (35 % clay) with a planting distance of 10 x 5 m.  Six treatments were applied to each cultivar with 4 replicates and 5 data trees per treatment with one guard tree between treatments in the row.  Micro irrigation (strip wetting) was used with one spreader between two trees, delivering  35 R.h^-1  with a radius of  2.75 m,  giving a wetted area  of  approximately 7 m²·tree^-1.  Water applied per treatment was measured with an industrial flow meter.  The season was divided into three phases (see Table 1) and each phase subjected to either a wet (short irrigation cycle) or dry (long irrigation cycle) treatment (Table 2).  For the “wet” treatment, irrigation was done when an average tensiomenter reading of 30 kPa was recorded on two tensiometers placed at 300 and 600 mm depth in the rootzone.  The “dry” treatment represents an average reading of 60 kPa.  The volume of water applied per irrigation was calculated (see Results) to wet the soil to field capacity.

 

 

 

Climatic data, including rainfall was measured in a nearby weather station.

Yield and fruit size were measured on a per tree basis and expressed as kg·tree^-1 and percentage of fruit (mass basis) per count.

Water use was calculated on a monthly basis and expressed in m³·ha^-1·day^-1 for each treatment.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The data reported are for the 1994/95 season only due to the fact that a hailstorm caused severe damage to the 1995/96 crop and excessive rain (Table 3) caused a large number of trees to die due to Phytophthora infection and drowning conditions.  The experiment was than abandoned.

 

 

Treatments

For irrigation purposes the term easily available water (EAW) is used in South Africa.  This amount by definition is the water available in the rootzone (0-600 mm depth) between field capacity (FC) and a matric potential of -100 kPa.  The “wet” treatment represents the extraction of 50% of EAW (see Figure 1) before the next irrigation and the “dry” treatment the extraction of roughly 80 % of EAW.  From Figure 1 it can thus be seen that “wet” means to irrigate when 28 mm of water was extracted from the rootzone and “dry” when 44 mm was extracted.  The difference between the two treatments therefore lies in a longer cycle length, with the dry treatment inducing more stress between irrigations.

Yield data

No significant yield differences between treatments were obtained (Table 4).  This is in contrast to the work of Faber et al. (1995) showing their wet treatment to enhance tree growth and reduce yield.  However, the “wet” treatments are probably not comparable in those two instances.

 

 

 

Effect on fruit size

The effect of the three treatments on fruit size are shown in Figure 2 for ‘Fuerte’ and Figure 3 for ‘Hass’.  In the case of ‘Fuerte’ the WDW treatment tended to improve the fruit size although not significantly, whereas the wet (WWW) and dry (DDD) treatments show very little difference in fruit size distribution.  ‘Hass’ was more reactive to a water stress, showing very small fruit with the WWW treatment and an improvement with both the drier treatments.  These findings are in contrast to those of Robertson (1969) and Bower (1985), but it must be kept in mind that the term ‘stressed’ is probably not comparable under these different conditions as was explained earlier.

 

Water use

The monthly water use was calculated as total water applied and effective rainfall received.  Only precipitations larger than 5 mm at a time were considered, which means that for the months of May, June, July, August, September and November only irrigation water was used.   For the other months (see rainfall figures, Table 3) 70 % of the rainfall was considered effective and calculated  for the wetted  area of 7 m² only.  In a study by Mostert (1999) affectivity of rainfall for micro-irrigation of citrus for the same season was shown to vary between 32 and 45 %.

The seasonal water use pattern for the two cultivars are expressed as m³·ha^-1·day^-1 and shown in Figures 4 and 5.  It is obvious that the water use for the two treatments shown (WWW and WDW) are very similar.  In the case of ‘Fuerte’ maximum water demand is approximately  50 m³·ha^-1·day^-1 during mid summer (January) reaching a low of 15 to 20 m³·ha^-1·day^-1 in winter.  For ‘Hass’ the maximum demand is slightly lower at almost  40 m³·ha^-1·day^-1  in December and also lower  in winter at  below 15 m³·ha^-1·day^-1.  The total water use per season for the wet treatments were calculated from these graphs and amounted to 8900 m³·ha^-1·yr^-1 for ‘Hass’ and 10200 m³·ha^-1·yr^-1 for ‘Fuerte’. These figures are higher than the 6680 m³·ha^-1·annum^-1 found in Israel by Lahav and Kalmar (1977) and the 7875 m³.ha^-1.annum^-1 for 6 year old trees as indicated by Gustafson et al. (1979) for California.

CONCLUSIONS

These results show that the term “wet” and “water stress” should be very well defined to be of value to other researchers.  Dry in this study referred to a longer cycle length only, therefore more water extracted between irrigations, with little difference between the annual amounts applied.  Although no significant effect on yield was obtained the positive effect of a water stress during certain phases of fruit growth on fruit size seems promising.  Further studies on the effect of deficit irrigation on improvement of fruit size of especially ‘Hass’ are necessary.

 

 

 

 

LITERATURE CITED

ADATO, I.;  LEVINSON, B. 1988.  Influence of daily intermittent drip irrigation on avocado (cv. Fuerte) fruit yield and fruit growth.  Journ. Hort. Sci.  63: 675-685.

BOWER, J.P.  1985.  The calcium accumulation pattern in avocado fruit as influenced by long-term irrigation regime.  S. Afr. Avocado Growers Assoc. Yrbk. 8: 97-99.

FABER, B.A.; ARPAIA, M.L.; YATES, M.V.  1995.  Irrigation management of avocado in a California coastal environment.  Proceedings III World Avocado Congress.  Tel Aviv, Israel.  189-195.  1998.

GUSTAFSON, C.D.;  MARSH, R.L.;  BRANSON, R.L.;  DAVIS, S.  1979.  Drip irrigation on avocados.  Calif. Avocado Soc. Yrb.  63: 95-134.

LAHAV, E.;  KALMAR, D.  1997.  Water requirements of avocado in Israel  I. Tree and soil parameters.  II. Influence on yield, fruit growth and oil content.  Aust. J. Agric. Res.  28: 859-877.

MOSTERT, P.G.  1999.  Die invloed van watertoedieningsopsies op die produksie van sitrus (Citrus sinensis Var. Valencia).  M.Sc. thesis, Univ. of the Free State, Free State, South Africa  (In press).

ROBERTSON, B.L.  1969.  The morphogenesis of the flower and fruit of the Fuerte avocado.  M.Sc. thesis, Univ. of Pretoria: 120 p.

VUTHAPANICH, S.;  HOFMAN, P.J.;  WHILEY, A.W.;  KLIEBER, A.;  SIMONS, D.H.  1995.  Effects of irrigation and foliar cultar on fruit yield and quality of Hass avocado fruit.  Proceedings III World Avocado Congress.  1998 Tel Aviv, Israel.  pp. 311-315. 

WHILEY, A.W.;  SARANAH, J.B.;  CULL, B.W.;  PEGG, K.G.  1988.  Manage avocado tree growth cycles for productivity gains.  Queensland Agric. J.  114: 29-36.