Avocado cv. Hass Needs Water Irrigation in Tropical Precipitation Regime: Evidence from Colombia

Abstract

The primary natural source of water for the Hass avocado crop in the tropics is precipitation. However, this is insufficient to provide most crops’ water requirements due to the spatial and temporal variability. This study aims to demonstrate that Hass avocado requires irrigation in Colombia, and this is done by analyzing the dynamics of local precipitation regimes and the influence of Intertropical Convergence Zone phenomena (ITCZ) on the irrigation requirement (IR). This study was carried out in Colombia’s current and potential Hass avocado production zones (PPA) by computing and mapping the monthly IR, and classifying months found to be in deficit and excess. The influence of ITCZ on IR by performing a metric relevance analysis on weights of optimized Artificial Neural Networks was computed. The water deficit map illustrates a 99.8% of PPA requires water irrigation at least one month a year. The movement of ITCZ toward latitudes far to those where PPA is located between May to September decreases precipitation and consequently increases the IR area of Hass avocado. Water deficit visualization maps could become a novel and powerful tool for Colombian farmers when scheduling irrigation in those months and periods identified in these maps.