Challenges for Sustainable Water Resource Management in the Spanish Olive Orchards

Olive in Spain has traditionally been a rainfed crop. However, this has changed over the last 30 years, and there are now 840,000 ha of irrigated olive orchards, about 30% of the cropping area. The province of Jaén in south-eastern Spain is an example of this shift. In this region, the implementation of deficit irrigation strategies involving the application of less than 1500 m3/ha (much less than the optimum crop requirements), fixed rotation supply, and drip irrigation has shown excellent results. Despite the advances made in water management in Spanish olive orchards in recent years, these systems are threatened by low profitability (associated with high energy costs) and growing competition for water resources with other sectors, accelerated by the effects of climate change, which could jeopardize the economic and social sustainability of olive cultivation. Therefore, some strategies have been proposed to increase the resilience and sustainability of Spanish olive orchards, which include developing integrated water resources management at basin scale; increasing the irrigated area using reclaimed, desalinated, or groundwater resources; or developing site-specific assessment promoting deficit irrigation scheduling to achieve significant water savings with a limited impact on yield.