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The need for sophisticated irrigation strategies in fruit tree orchards has led to an increasing interest in reliable and robust sensor technology that allows automatic and continuous recording of the water stress of trees under field conditions. In this work we have evaluated the potential of the leaf patch clamp pressure (LPCP) probe for monitoring water stress in a 4-year-old ‘Arbequina’ hedgerow olive orchard with 1667treesha⁻¹. The leaf patch output pressure (P_p) measured by the LPCP probe is inversely correlated with the leaf turgor pressure (>50kPa). Measurements of P_p were made over the entire irrigation season of 2010 (April to November) on control trees, irrigated up to 100% of the crop water needs (ET_c), and on trees under two regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) strategies. The 60RDI trees received 59.2% of ET_c and the 30RDI trees received 29.4% of ET_c. In the case of the RDI trees the irrigation amounts …