Ben-Gal, A., Department of Environmental Physics and Irrigation, Institute of Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences, Agricultural Research Organization, Gilat Research Center, Mobile Post Negev 2, Israel
Beiersdorf, I., Department of Environmental Physics and Irrigation, Institute of Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences, Agricultural Research Organization, Gilat Research Center, Mobile Post Negev 2, Israel
Yermiyahu, U., Department of Soil Chemistry, Plant Nutrition and Microbiology, Institute of Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences, Agricultural Research Organization, Gilat Research Center, Mobile Post Negev 2, Israel
Soda, N., Department of Environmental Physics and Irrigation, Institute of Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences, Agricultural Research Organization, Gilat Research Center, Mobile Post Negev 2, Israel, Department of Fruit Tree Sciences, Institute of Plant Sciences, Agricultural Research Organization, Gilat Research Center, Mobile Post Negev 2, Israel
Presnov, E., Department of Environmental Physics and Irrigation, Institute of Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences, Agricultural Research Organization, Gilat Research Center, Mobile Post Negev 2, Israel
Zipori, I., Department of Fruit Tree Sciences, Institute of Plant Sciences, Agricultural Research Organization, Gilat Research Center, Mobile Post Negev 2, Israel
Ramirez Crisostomo, R., Soil Physics and Land Management, Wageningen University Environmental Sciences, PO Box 47, Wageningen, Netherlands
Dag, A., Department of Fruit Tree Sciences, Institute of Plant Sciences, Agricultural Research Organization, Gilat Research Center, Mobile Post Negev 2, Israel

Expansion of irrigated olives, combined with prevalence of water containing dissolved salts, leads to irrigation-induced exposure of olive trees to salinity. Root zone salinity can rise either as a function of increasing input irrigation water salinity (ECi) or relative reductions in water for leaching. We investigated five ECi levels from 0.5 to 11.0 dS m−1 with a constant leaching fraction (LF) of 0.29 and five leaching levels from 0.05 to 0.44 (drainage: irrigation ratio) with water of ECi = 5.0 dS m−1 on young bearing Olea europaea cv Barnea olive trees grown in 2.5 m3 weighing-drainage lysimeters over three years. Tree-scale response to increased salinity did not demonstrate any sign of a threshold value and was not differentiated by the cause of salinity, be it changes in input irrigation water salt concentrations or changes in LF. Soil salinity, measured as electrical conductivity of saturated soil paste extract (ECe) and maintained at stable levels over time, decreased tree water consumption and tree size measured as trunk area or above-ground biomass by 40–60 % as it increased from 1.2 to around 3.5–4.0 dS m−1. Further increases in ECe to as high as 7.5 dS m−1 brought these parameters to 20–30 % of the treatment with low salinity. Fruit yield also decreased with increasing salinity, albeit with less drastic relative effects. An analytical model calculating water and salt balance and subsequent evapotranspiration or biomass as a function of irrigation water quantity and salinity successfully predicted the measured results. © 2016 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg