Effects of alternate furrow irrigation on physiological response, agronomic performance and physio-chemical quality of tomato cultivars

Water scarcity is one of the factors affecting sustainable agricultural production in many regions of the world. It is well argued that climate change will contribute to increase water scarcity in the future by increasing the incidence and recurring droughts. Therefore, sustaining crop production under shortage of water supply will require producing more with less water. Under this circumstance, deficit irrigation such as partial root-zone drying irrigation, also possible to practice as alternate furrow irrigation (AFI) in surface irrigation system, is thought to be one of the prime tools to optimize irrigation water use in agriculture. This irrigation technique was initially developed to exploit chemical root-to-shoot signaling by imposing soil moisture heterogeneity through alternately applying irrigation water to halves of the root zone. Accordingly, in alternate furrow irrigation (AFI) the water is applied to every other furrow, while the dry furrow received water in the next irrigation. This dissertation presents the physiological, agronomic yield and physicochemical quality of tomato cultivars responses to different irrigation techniques and provides the results of water saving potential using alternate furrow irrigation in a surface irrigation system.