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- Title
THERMAL IMAGING TO ASSESS THE PLANT-WATER STATUS IN WOODY CROPS UNDER ARID AND SEMI-ARID CONDITIONS.
- Authors
García-Tejero, Iván Francisco; Durán-Zuazo, Víctor Hugo; Muriel-Fernández, José Luis
- Abstract
Water is the most limiting factor for irrigated agriculture in arid and semi-arid areas of European Mediterranean countries. The searching of alternative irrigation strategies such as deficit irrigation and the use of different tools to monitor the crop-water status are some options to improve the water management under limiting drought conditions. Infrared thermography is a non-invasive promising technique to monitor the crop-water status based on the relations between the leaf or canopy temperature and the transpiration rate, which is largely related with the stomatal conductance. From an energy balance point of view, as a consequence of stomatal regulation (partial closure) under a mild or moderate water stress, leaf temperature tends to increase because of a decrease in the heat dissipation associated with the transpiration process, which is known as the evaporative cooling process. However, temperature readings are highly dependent on many meteorological variables being very difficult to define threshold values of canopy temperature for the irrigation scheduling or the crop-water status monitoring. For this reason, in spite of many works devoted to the use of infrared thermography, there are many questions and doubts that have to be solved for real optimization, protocolling and standardization of this technique, (such as, when the images should be taken, the best time along the day, the most representative, and relevant water stress index or the image processing). Taking into account these considerations, the aim of this work was to respond to some questions that could help to optimize the use of this technique in some woody crops: i) which are the main advantages and disadvantages of this technique?; ii) which of the actual thermal indices is the most useful and representative?; iii) when is the best moment to assess the crop physiological status using the canopy temperature, focusing the answers in woody crops.
- Subjects
INFRARED imaging; THERMOGRAPHY; AGROHYDROLOGY; DEFICIT irrigation; IRRIGATION scheduling
- Publication
Environmental Research Journal, 2015, Vol 9, Issue 3, p269
- ISSN
1935-3049
- Publication type
Article