Fruit quality of pomegranate grown in arid environment and irrigated with saline water

In arid regions, saline soils naturally rich in trace elements require identifying new crops and implementing management strategies for sustaining crop production and protecting water quality. Poor quality water produced from such soils can be utilized to grow specialty crops that are specifically selected for tolerance to high salt and B, such as pomegranates. The goal of this study was to evaluate the physiological responses related to nutritional quality in fruit from 1-year-old pomegranate trees irrigated for 3 years with typical poor quality water (i.e., that found in the western San Joaquin Valley, CA) containing high salinity (ranging from 3 to 9 dS m⁻¹), Se (0.25 mg Se L⁻¹) and B (4 mg B L⁻¹) in a micro-plot tile system where the root system was laterally confined. This study shows that the young pomegranate trees tolerated irrigation with poor water quality containing high salinity, Se and B for 3 years. Under these treatments and growing conditions, fruit were smaller but contained higher concentrations of phenolic compounds than the same variety of pomegranates grown under unconfined root system and irrigated with good quality water. The juice produced from fruit collected from these trees contained Se (up to 0.24 mg L⁻¹), as well as high concentrations of nutrients, including antioxidant phenolic compounds. The production of nutrient-enriched pomegranate fruit and juice may represent higher market value crop products using the poor quality water as a source of irrigation.