Determining the Amount of Applied Water and Water Productivity in Apple Orchards in Fars Province

Improvement and enhancement of water productivity is one of the effective and applied solutions to produce valuable gardens products under stress conditions in the country, and especially in Fars province as one of the regions producing garden products. Therefore, determining applied water and water productivity in apple gardens of Fars province was the main objective of this study. In this study, a total of 24 apple gardens were selected in three districts of Abadeh, Eghlid and Sepidan, having the largest cultivated area and production of apple as the experimental pilots. The volume of water (using flume or volumetric devices), apple yield and soil characteristics, meteorological variables and irrigation parameters were measured in experimental gardens. Results showed that average yield was 30.2 t ha-1. Applied water varied from 17956 to 23040 m3 ha-1. Water productivity varied from 0.07 to 6.28 kg m-3 and averaged 1.67 kg m-3. Although changing irrigation systems from surface to drip ones reduced water consumption, but increased the yield and therefore insignificantly increased water productivity.