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Four orchard floor management strategies—disking, mowing, chemical mow, and clean culture using herbicides—were evaluated in a `Limoneira 8A Lisbon' lemon orchard in Southern Arizona, starting in the fall of 1993. Disking was the cultural practice used to manage the orchard floor before the start of the experiment. Although disking the orchard floor may have injured shallow tree roots, it provided satisfactory weed control except underneath the tree canopies where bermudagrass, purple nutsedge, and other weed species survived. Chemical mowing with Roundup at 1.168 L/ha did not provide satisfactory control of many weed species and required too many applications to be commercially feasible. This treatment was converted to a combination clean culture and disk treatment (clean and disk) in Summer 1995. Mowing the orchard suppressed broadleaf weed species, allowing the spread and establishment of grasses, primarily bermudagrass, and to a lesser extent, southern sandburr. A fall application of Solicam and Surflan followed by a summer spot treatment application of Roundup was used to control the weed flora in the clean culture treatment. Spot treatment applications of sethoxydim (Poast and Torpedo) were also made to control bermudagrass growing under the tree canopies in the clean culture treatment. Total 1995 yield of the mow, clean & disk, disk, and clean culture treatments were 4867, 5112, 5216, and 6042 kg of fruit, respectively. For the first harvest of 1995, the trees under clean culture also had significantly greater numbers of large fruit than did the trees under the other treatments.
Blueberry reducers in Texas must often irrigate with sodic water. Excess Na+ leads to reduced growth, necrosis, and plant mortality. Ca2+ is known to ameliorate such detrimental effects in many crops, but little is known about the response of rabbiteye blueberry. To elucidate the influence of Ca2+ on the uptake and translocation of Na+, plants were subjected to NaCl in hydroponics solutions (10, 25, 50 and 100 mM NaCl) and the uptake of Na+ was traced over a 24h period using 22Na+ Additionally, for each treatment, half the plants were supplied with 10 mM Ca2+. Plants were then transferred to identical, but unlabeled, solution, then harvested at intervals up to 28 days following cessation of labelling.
Preliminary results indicate that plants subjected to 25 mM Na+ and 0 mM Ca2+ showed less ability to exclude Na+ from the roots, and accumulated more Na+ in roots, stems, an leaves than did plants supplied with 25 mM Na+ and 10 mM Ca2+. Leaf tissue accumulated more Na per gram fresh weight than did any other part of the plant, regardless of Ca2+ treatment.
Results from the remaining treatments, root 22Na+ efflux data, and total tissue Na+ and Ca2+ concentrations will also be reported.
Mature `Campbell Nucellar Valencia' trees were converted from border flood irrigation to four pressurized irrigation systems. A border flood irrigation treatment was included as a control. Four years later, roots were collected from 62 holes (10 cm diameter × 120 cm) on a 60 cm grid on one side of each treated tree. For trickle irrigated trees, the highest concentration of roots was found around the emitters, particularly at 30 to 90 cm deep, but some roots appeared to be located below the 120 cm depth. Root distribution was similar for the basin irrigated trees, but the highest concentration of roots was found in a larger wetted area near the tree trunk. This treatment had the highest root concentrations, compared to all other treatments. Root distribution of trees irrigated by spray irrigation was similar to the basin treatment, except that root spread was not as extensive. Roots of trees irrigated by sprinkler and flood were distributed more randomly, and were more likely to extend past the drip line, compared to the other treatments. Root concentrations also declined with increasing depth.