The sustainability of woody crop agroecosystems requires continued improvements to water, nutrient and soil management. In this work, the combination of resource availability or fertigation dose with soil management practices was tested in a 2 × 2 factorial design in a drip irrigated young almond orchard. The fertigation doses were: the farmer supply at 60% of crop evapotranspiration and full nutrient requirements and the half-farmer supply at 30% of crop evapotranspiration and half nutrient requirements. The soil management practices were: bare soil and cover crops in the inter-row (mixture of grasses and legumes). Tree growth, yield, water and nutrient status, and cover crop biomass and nutrient status were determined, as well as inter-row soil C and N concentration. Results showed that the effect of resource availability was independent of soil management and vice versa. The half farmer treatment reduced tree vegetative growth and yield compared to farmer treatment, due to a negative effect on the water status, without observing a decrease in the concentration of nutrients in leaves or fruit. Trees with cover crop also reduced growth and yield compared to bare soil management. This was due to a nutritional competition, mainly of Ca, Fe, Mn and Zn, rather than to a decline in tree water status. Cover crops sequester up to 1 t/ha/year of carbon but do not increase soil organic carbon, nor soil total nitrogen. Cover crops proved to be efficient in reducing soil nitrate concentration in the topsoil and therefore has potential to prevent its leaching. Deficit fertigation and the use of cover crops can be effective practices to preserve and save water and nutrient resources in Mediterranean agroecosystems, but should be established with caution so as not to compromise the profitability of the orchard.

Drip irrigation is presently widely recognized as the most efficient irrigation system that can be used in woody perennial crops. However, uncertainties exist on the more appropriate agronomic design to employ. Here, we summarized the research carried out for three seasons in two young woody perennial crops (persimmon and lemon) in southeastern Spain. Several irrigation designs were compared by maintaining a similar amount of water application but varying the number of emitters and pipelines in each row in the orchard. In the lemon trial, the agronomic irrigation design was additionally combined with different irrigation regimes, comparing full irrigation (FI) with sustained deficit irrigation (SDI). In the persimmon trees, which were still at the juvenility stage, varying the number of emitters per tree or the number of drip lines per tree row, neither affects tree performance nor fruit yield in two out of the three seasons. However, over the entire experimental period, the relative trunk growth increased when more emitters were employed. In the lemon trial, carried out with trees that had reached commercial production, the FI, compared with SDI, increased trunk growth and average fruit weight, while a reduced number of fruits per tree without affecting total yield was observed in the third year of experimentation. The number of emitters per tree only had an effect the first year, increasing lemon fruit weight when the number of drippers per tree increased. In addition, fruit composition was not consistently affected by the irrigation design. It is concluded that, for a given irrigation dose, irrigation frequency, and soil conditions (loam-clay texture), in both very young and more mature trees, increasing the number of emitters or the wetted area only had some slight positive effects on tree performance.

Defoliation (leaf removal or pruning) is a common practice in tomato production that makes crops more manageable, prevents conditions conducive to fungal attack and increases the exposure of the fruit to light, especially in winter conditions. The intensity and frequency of leaf removal on commercial farms often vary according to workforce availability criteria, which makes it difficult to determine their effect on tomato crop yields. It would be reasonable to think that a reduction in leaf area influences radiation interception and, therefore, the production of assimilates and biomass. However, in intensive production systems with a high leaf area index (LAI), leaf pruning can increase radiation interception, either by reducing competition between productive and vegetative organs or by increasing radiation use efficiency. This study was therefore designed to assess the effect of different intensities and frequencies of basal leaf removal on dry matter production and partitioning between the different organs of the plant, and thus on tomato crop productivity. A series of trials were conducted over three consecutive seasons, with a trial conducted per season: (a) Trial 1: leaf removal control—LRC (with leaves removed from the base to two leaves below the truss close to harvest, T0) was compared with LR1 (leaf removal from the base to two leaves below the truss above T0, i.e., T1) and LR2 (two trusses above T0 (T2)); (b) Trial 2: LRC compared with LR2 and LR4 (four trusses above T0 (T4)), carried out at two frequencies; and (c) Trial 3: LRC compared with an intense leaf removal treatment (LRI) whereby between 10 and 12 leaves were left on each stem. LAI saturation values under our conditions were found to be around 2.0. No significant differences in yield were found between the control and treatments LR1, LR2 and LR4, with a reduction in the number of leaves of up to 35% and LAI values during harvest above 2.0. The intense leaf removal treatment (LRI), which reduced the number of leaves by 47% and the LAI value from 2.8 to 1.5 compared to the control, resulted in a 15% reduction in dry biomass and a 17% decrease in fruit yield.