The Effect of Recycled Water Irrigation on Young Olive Trees

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The problem of water shortage is one of the major limiting factors in food production and agriculture development in the arid and semi arid regions. Reclaimed water is one of the most significant available water resources that shall be consumed in agriculture and urban landscape maintenance. In order to investigate the impact of water quality and its application method on olive trees this experiment was carried out during 2010-2012 in the semiarid central part of Iran on young olive trees. The trees were irrigated by a new subsurface-leaky irrigation (SLI) system and surface irrigation in line with irrigation with recycle and clean water for 24 months. The results revealed that SLI system could enhance trees growth, leaf area, Fv/Fm and photosynthesis by68, 26, 4 and 42% respectively, although it decreased leaves soluble sugars (47%). In addition, irrigating trees by SLI system using reclaimed water could increase N and Mg uptake 138 and 8% respectively. Plants irrigated with RW showed improved growth (42%) leaf area26% and photosynthesis 23.4% compared with CL water. Furthermore Mg, Na, K, P and N surprisingly increase 12, 59, 30, 7, and 92 % respectively in leaf tissue in application recycle water. In overall, this experiment showed that recycled water could be a favorable resource for olive trees irrigation and SLI irrigation system was more efficient in irrigation in this research.

Key word: Recycle water, subsurface irrigation, Nutrition element

Abbreviation: CW: clean water, RW: recycle water, SI: surface irrigation system, SLI: subsurface leakage irrigation, Ph: photosynthesis, E: evaporation, gs: stomata conductance,

Introduction:
Water shortage in arid and semi-arid regions and declining its availability to a crisis ...

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...996). P was estimated by colorimetrical determinations using spectrophotometer (UV-160, A, shimadzu, Japan.).
2-3-Data analysis
Collected data were subjected to analysis of variance using the SAS (9.1, SAS institute, 2004) statistical software package. Statistical assessments of differences between mean values were performed by the LSD test at P = 0.05.
Result
The effect of water quality on Vegetative measurements and photosynthesis indices of the trees are presented in Table 1. No significant differences were found between parameters: gs, shoot number in both years, but others were higher in RW application. Height of trees and leaf area in first year was not significant but in second year it increased by 42 and 29% respectively in application RW. Photosynthesis rate appears significantly higher (23.4 µmol m−2 s−1) in plants receiving recycle water than clean water.

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