Particle film technology: A supplemental tool to save water

• Kaolin reduces transpiration and improves WP in tomato, bean and Clementine crops.
• Kaolin: a tool to mitigate detrimental effect of salinity and water stress.
• Kaolin reduces leaf temperature and preserves good water status of plants.
• Kaolin alleviates the transplant stress of tomato, pepper, eggplant and zucchini.

This paper aims to evaluate kaolin application as an effective tool for controlling stomatal conductance (gs) and transpiration rate (E), in order to enhance tolerance to water stress and salinity and to improve water productivity. Five experiments were carried out under open field conditions in Southern Italy in order to evaluate the effect of kaolin application on the physiological responses of well watered bean and Clementine, tomato under three salinity levels and two irrigation regimes and to try to overcome the vegetables’ transplant shock under two irrigation regimes.Kaolin reduced crop evapotranspiration in bean by 13% and increased photosynthetic water productivity (pWP) and yield water productivity (yWP) by 20 and 9.8%, respectively. In Clementine kaolin reduced E by 26.2% and increased pWP by 30.5%.In tomato kaolin improved the water status of the plant, and reduced gs, net photosynthesis (A) and E under low salinity or well watered conditions. By contrast, under salt stress or drought, kaolin was effective in limiting the reduction in A and reducing leaf temperature (Tl). This increased pWP by 25.3 and 33.1%, respectively, in well watered and water stressed tomato, and by 9.2 and 24.9%, respectively, in the non saline and high saline treatment.Kaolin proved effective in limiting transplant shock under conditions of limited water supply, increasing dry biomass growth rate and biomass water productivity (bWP) by 18.4 and 19%, respectively.Kaolin can be efficiently utilized as an antitranspirant to alleviate the effects of drought and salinity, to reduce transplant shock and to save water in dry regions.