Irrigation of Pistachio Trees in Turkey and Its Importance

Abstract

Pistachio is grown most intensively in Iran, Syria, Turkey and U.S.A. The other pistachio producing countries are in the Near East, North Africa and the Southern Europe. The pistachio trees are irrigated in Iran and U.S.A.. As it is well known that irrigation is a very important factor in obtaining high yields on good quality. In the very near future new and irrigated pistachio nut orchards in the Southeast Anatolia Project (GAP) region will expand Turkey's pistachio nut areas. It is expected that when the project is completed the Turkish pistachio nut production will be at least doubled. The irrigation experiments with different rootstocks have already been started in Sanliurfa where pistachio grown main province. The expected changes by irrigation, leaf size, number of current year’s shoot and length of shoot will be increased. The result with irrigation increasing the yield, bigger nut size, high splitting percentage, low blank nut rate and lesser alternate bearing will be obtained. Some problems also occure becasue of unsuitable irrigation system.