2007-08 Deliverables
Task 5 Research
Principal Investigator(s): Raul I. Cabrera
Task 5: Urban Landscape and In-Home Water Conservation
- Characterize the hourly, diurnal and seasonal patterns of water and macro-nutrient uptake in rose crops. To this end controlled greenhouse experiments involving recirculating hydroponic systems will be used to monitor hourly, daily and weekly water use by the crop, and then correlated with reference evapotranspiration and crop growth rates (determined both destructively and non-destructively).
- Evaluate the irrigation requirements and water use efficiency of staple nursery crops and landscape plants. This year we’ll be focusing on widely used and economically important shrubs, including selections or cultivars of genera like Ilex, Buxus, Photinia, Ligustrum, Nerium and natives like Leucophyllum and Lonicera. The study will evaluate water requirements, use efficiency and horticultural performance of plants irrigated at differing regimes, using potential evapotranspiration as the reference standard.
- Continue to work on the analyses, summarization and writing of manuscripts and professional presentations using the data from RGBI studies done in previous years.