ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Agron.
Sec. Field Water Management
VARIABILITY OF THE CROP COEFFICIENT IN A SOUTHEASTERN U.S. PECAN ORCHARD
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Georgia, Griffin Campus, Griffin, United States
- 2University of Georgia - Tifton Campus, Tifton, United States
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This paper reports on the daily crop coefficient dynamics from budbreak to harvest over a four-year period. This study determines the actual evapotranspiration of pecans in the hot and humid growing conditions of Georgia. It does so by using a combination of eddy-covariance and micro-lysimeter measurements. Furthermore, this paper evaluated the actual evapotranspiration by comparing it with both the actual irrigation practices used by commercial growers and the current recommended irrigation schedule. The present study found that the intraseasonal variability observed in pecan water use is more significant than the interannual variability. From bud break through harvest, the daily pecan water use ranged from 0.4 to 6.2 mm with daily crop coefficient (Kc) values varying between 0.3 and 1.0 during that period. In this four-year study, the water demand of pecan trees in Georgia typically were found to hover around 680 mm. During the study, the total evapotranspiration of pecans during the growing season (Mar – Oct) was found to be 34% higher for seven- and ten-year-old trees in 2020 and 2023 respectively than the current Extension Service recommendation of irrigation in Georgia, US while the water supplementation was ~42% higher than the actual evapotranspiration of pecan trees. These results regarding water requirements may suggest a revision of the true water needs of pecan orchards in Georgia.
Keywords: climate-smart irrigation, irrigation in hot and humid pecan orchards, orchard evapotranspiration, Water Management, water relations in nut trees
Received: 17 Oct 2025; Accepted: 21 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Poudel, Leclerc, Zhang and Wells. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Monique Leclerc
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