Olive Irrigation Management

Although thousands of years ago olive was planted in the Mediterranean region, but there is little information about water consumption, crop coefficient and irrigation scheduling of olive trees. With existence limitation of water resources, the need for optimal water use in the agricultural sector is essential. Accordingly, the production of agricultural crops with a minimum water consumption is very important and considered as an important strategy for our country. Increasing demand for olive, either fresh or canned, or in the oil-milling industry, has led the country's agricultural authorities and gardeners to move towards a higher quality and quantity product, but it seems that achieving this goal without proper management in increasingly irrigated olive orchards is not possible. The olive is a resistant tree that produce acceptable yield even under restricted water conditions. Olive needs about 600 to 800 mm of annual precipitation to completely compensate the need for water. In this paper, a review of applied research on irrigation management of olive trees such as water requirement, crop coefficient, irrigation scheduling and its appropriate irrigation systems have been reviewed.