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The increasing demand for sustainable food and non-food biomass production is challenging farmers all over the world, particularly in those areas where are short in water supply. Besides, the constant spreading of desertification in the Mediterranean region makes cropping even more difficult. In fact, the main problem related to desertification is the reduction of rainy events in a given region, although the annual rainfall remains constant. Hence, surface water reservoirs are accessible only for a limited period of the year forcing farmers to rely on belowground water, which is expensive and, sometimes, impossible to carry out. In the framework of MediOpuntia Project, a possible strategy to harvest rain water in arid and semiarid regions of the world, is represented by the installation of subsurface water retention Technology (SWRT) made of impermeable U-shaped barriers laid 80-100 cm belowground with aim to prevent water loss due to percolation. In addition, also soil nutrients loss is prevented as they will be collected by the membranes and kept available to roots after major rainy events. So far, the market still lacks the availability of machineries capable to lay impermeable membranes belowground in a single pass, and the present Project aims to fill this gap. The present study aims to develop and test a machinery capable to lay an impermeable membrane at 80-100 cm belowground to catch rainwater in arid and semi-arid areas. MedioPuntia Project

A field experiment was conducted on drip irrigated date palm trees (Barhi var.) in a private farm during the 2020 and 2021 seasons to evaluate the effect of five irrigation treatments (120, 100, 80, and 60% ETo and farmer practice) on amounts of applied irrigation water (AIW), consumptive use (CU), date yield and its components, fruit quality, water use efficiency (WUE), water productivity (WP), consumed electric energy, net income, a local date crop coefficient (Kc) and yield response factor (Ky). Results revealed that, average ETo values varied between 1.26 mm/day in December and 9.85 mm/day in July. The 2–year average AIW values were 17 377, 14 546, 11 715, 8 885 and 24 680 m3/ha for the 120, 100, 80 and 60% ETo treatments and farmer practice, respectively. Highest and lowest fruit yields of 39.2 and 15.2 t/ha were recorded for the 120% and 60% ETo treatments, respectively. The WP values of the same treatments were 2.27 and 1.23 kg fruits/m3. Seasonal average Kc value of 0.74 is obtained for the 120% ETo treatment. The Ky value of 1.187 is obtained for the Barhi variety. The lowest consumed energy (64.7%) and highest net income (31.8%) were recorded for 60% and 120% ETo treatments compared with farmer practice.