Mechanism and Practice of Regulated Dificit Irrigation(RDI) for Fruit Trees in China

Water-saving in agriculture is a very important task for developing sustainable agriculture in China, with one way being the application of water saving irrigation technique. This paper presents a new management technique of water-saving irrigation in orchards——the regulated deficit irrigation (RDI). i.e. in specific period of growing season, irrigation time and supplying water quantity are limited in order to let plant endure a certain content of water stress, which can reduce excessive vigour. After this specific period, enough water is supplied to the trees that can be more fruitful and fruit size can increase afterwards. Besides, a large quantity of irrigation water can be saved. The field experiment results proved these. The details that how to apply RDI technique to the orchard irrigation management were presented. And developments of RDI in China was discussed.