Fertigation in Fruit Crops

Abstract

Fertigation has the greatest potential for the efficient use of water and fertilizers. Drip irrigation facilitates maximum water and nutrient efficiency by reaching the active root zone, and thus minimizing the wetting area. Adding fertilizer to drip irrigation reduces the costs associated with irrigation and fertilizer application. Additionally, fertigation minimizes the losses of nutrients through leaching. In this article, different aspects of fertigation are reviewed, including its impact on nutrient content in leaf and soil, tree growth, yield as well as quality of fruits. It clearly demonstrates the advantages and benefits of fertigation over conventional soil fertilization in terms of comparable or better tree growth, yield and fruit quality, as well as in terms of achieving considerable savings in the amount of water and fertilizer used. In fertigation, nutrient use efficiency could be as high as 90% compared to 40−60% in conventional methods.