2018 California

Environmental evaluation of high-value agricultural produce with diverse water sources: case study from Southern California

Authors: Bell, E.; Stokes-Draut, J.; Horvath, A.

Meeting agricultural demand in the face of a changing climate will be one of the major challenges of the 21st century. California is the single largest agricultural producer in the United States but is prone to extreme hydrologic events, including multi-year droughts. Ventura County is one of California's most productive growing regions but faces water shortages and deteriorating water quality. The future of California's agriculture is dependent on our ability to identify and implement alternative

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2022 Mexico

Blue and Green Water Footprint of Agro-Industrial Avocado Production in Central Mexico

Authors: Gómez-Tagle, A.; Fuerte-Velázquez, D.; Barajas-Alcalá, A.; Quiroz-Rivera, F.; Alarcón-Chaires, P.; Guerrero-García-Rojas, H.

Mexico is the world-leading avocado producer. The municipality of Uruapan in the Avocado Belt region in Central Mexico produces 153,000 tons a year, nearly 6.4% of Mexico’s total volume. We performed a green and blue water footprint (WF) analysis between 2012 to 2017 in this municipality, and compared the estimated WF volumes with water concessions for agriculture. Mean annual rainfall was 1757.0 mm in the study period, mean effective rainfall 877.2 mm, mean crop evapotranspiration 933.1 mm, and

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2021 Israel

Rootstock-Dependent Response of Hass Avocado to Salt Stress

Authors: Lazare, S.; Cohen, Y.; Goldshtein, E.; Yermiyahu, U.; Ben-Gal, A.; Dag, A.

Salt stress is a major limiting factor in avocado (Persea americana) cultivation, exacerbated by global trends towards scarcity of high-quality water for irrigation. Israeli avocado orchards have been irrigated with relatively high-salinity recycled municipal wastewater for over three decades, over which time rootstocks were selected for salt-tolerance. This study's objective was to evaluate the physiological salt response of avocado as a function of the rootstock. We irrigated fruit-bearing 'Hass'

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2020 Israel

Mitigating negative effects of long-term treated wastewater application via soil and irrigation manipulations: Sap flow and water relations of avocado trees (Persea americana Mill.)

Authors: Nemera, D.B.; Bar-Tal, A.; Levy, G.; Lukyanov, V.; Tarchitzky, J.; Paudel. I.; Cohen, S.

Recent studies have shown significant negative effects of long-term irrigation with treated wastewater (TWW) on performance of orchards planted on clay soil. The aim of this study was to evaluate water use and water relations of different mitigation measures to remedy the declining performance of a mature commercial fruit-bearing 'Hass' avocado orchard (Persea americana Mill.) growing in a clay soil irrigated with TWW since 2009. The mitigation measures, each in 6 replicates, included freshwater

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2021 Israel

Mitigating negative effects of long-term treated wastewater irrigation: Leaf gas exchange and water use efficiency response of avocado trees (Persea americana Mill.)

Authors: Nemera, D.B.; Bar-Tal, A.; Levy, G.; Tarchitzky, J.; Rog, I.; Klein, T.; Cohen, S.

Declining performance of avocado orchards growing in a clayey soil irrigated with treated wastewater (TWW) for more than 5 years has been observed in Israel. Measures studied to mitigate this were freshwater (FW), blended TWW:FW in a 1:1 ratio (MIX), low-frequency TWW-irrigation (LFI), TWW irrigated tuff trenches (TUF) and TWW as the control treatment. This study reports on the response of avocado leaf gas exchange, intrinsic water use efficiency, leaf water potential and leaf hydraulic conductance

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2020 California

Use of alternative water sources in irrigation: potential scales, costs, and environmental impacts in California

Authors: Qin, Y.; Horvath, A.

Under the risk of drought, unreliable water supplies, and growing water demand, there is a growing need worldwide to explore alternative water sources to meet the demand for irrigation in agriculture and other outdoor activities. This paper estimates stocks, production capacities, economic costs, energy implications, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with recycled water, desalinated brackish and seawater, and stormwater in California, the largest US state and the most significant fresh

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