New Irrigation Tech On Tap To Help Growers Feeling Drought Stress
May 2, 2022 
Every drop counts. Especially in California. That is the common refrain among suppliers of the latest irrigation technologies.
Realizing that the state’s fruit and nut growers — unlike their vegetable-farming counterparts — cannot simply forego planting, industry leaders offer the following advice for growers who are intent on saving their trees, vines, and bushes during extreme times:
Dino (DJ) Simoni Jr., Pest Control Adviser, Agronomist, Wilbur-Ellis: “The drought is a serious and devastating issue facing fruit and nut growers. We recommend assessing the whole picture of the irrigation water you are applying from source to “out” of the plant use zone. Approaches to account for the water on your ranch include using soil moisture monitors, in-field evapotranspiration monitors, flow meters, well/water source level indicators, irrigation leachate catching monitors, and checking distribution uniformity of the irrigation system.”
“It’s also important to look at reducing drought stress on your trees — and any way to reduce stress on trees aside from irrigation. Ensure you have a well-planned and monitored fertility and pest program, as healthy trees can handle more stress than unhealthy trees. Reduce heat and drought stress with products that can be applied to your tree’s canopies or roots such as penetration or retention products, registered plant growth regulators, sunscreen-like materials or canopy temperature-reducing products.”
“Overall, make sure you are monitoring and managing your irrigation and water source the best way you can. I see a lot more over-irrigated than under-irrigated issues. If you have access to hard data to make better decisions, you may be able to reduce how much you irrigate.”
Niki Tubacki, Product Manager, Ceres Imaging: “This year requires making hard choices about where irrigation should be applied. In drought conditions, growers may need to think about their strategies for allocating water not in terms of how to prevent stress altogether but of where exactly it’s most important to minimize stress. That means thinking about which portions of the fields have the biggest impact on the bottom line and prioritizing sufficient irrigation to those areas. We can’t change the conditions growers are dealing with, but we can position them to take advantage of crop health data in finding the best possible way forward.”
Javier Meyer, Chief Marketing Officer-Director, Aqua4D: “It’s all about efficient irrigation management and incorporating state-of-the-art technology to get the most out of the available water. In California there are still some outdated practices being used, such as flooding. Additionally, even when incorporating Ag 4.0 or climate-smart technologies, some still continue irrigating the same way anyway. Monitoring, measuring, and adjusting irrigation accordingly has not only a positive impact on crops, soil health, and the environment, but also impacts bottom lines by generating considerable savings in water, electricity, and consumables.”
Bill Terry, Director, Business Development, WaterPoint Irrigation Technologies: “If your watering decisions vacillate between protecting the future of your trees, bushes, or vines and making a profit this season, you may be able to achieve both — even with less water. Granted, there are far too many uncontrollables, but one thing we’ve learned over the past six seasons is there’s a non-chemical process to: 1) control percolation of water in the soil and dramatically improve plant-available water; 2) reduce runoff and leaching; 3) recharge water in the active root zone — after deficits, planned or not. We help our growers know where the roots are pulling and at what depths they are not. To conserve water and maintain or increase yields, farmers in 2022 have access to technologies never before available. You might be able to have your cake and eat it too.”
Tanner Oliphant, Director of Technical Sales-North America, Prospera Technologies, a Valmont Company: “Implementing precision irrigation management technology provides the grower with a piece of mind, allowing them to make more scientific- and data-driven-based decisions of when and how much to irrigate in drought and wet years. However, in drought years, where every drop counts, it is even more important for the growers to make sure they are applying water to the crop at the right time and right amounts. Mechanized irrigation is becoming increasingly more popular with the adoption of variable rate individual sprinkler control, which allows growers to variably apply water and chemicals through the machine, which reduces waste and overwatering.”
Jim Clare, President, Pacific Southwest Irrigation: “The theory is that the most efficient irrigation replaces the moisture used when it is used. Irrigate in shorter sets more often, tied to the assumed water usage of the crop. Irrigate at night. Factor in rain — 1 inch of rain stored in the soil may be four days of irrigation saved. Do not get behind. After harvest, you may have to just sustain the trees. If sprinklers or micro are the irrigation mode, consider one or two lines of drip to make things easier. Do not assume drip is more efficient, but it might help in certain situations, especially harvest.”
Pat Biddy, Senior Agronomist, Irrigation Matters: “Make sure you have a probe in the ground. You can save water by managing the timing of the first irrigation. Pulling the trigger for the first irrigation based on data and not the calendar can help preserve the water you will need later. Throughout the season you will need all of the tools — weather/ET, soil moisture, pressure bombing. It is important to use more than one tool to make correlated decisions to optimize your water options.”
Matt Sani, Agronomist, Irrigation Matters: “Data serves as the “flight instrument” while farming and helps assess past, current, and a forecasted trajectory of your farm’s conditions. These conditions include static water level of your well, ambient temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, solar radiation, soil moisture, soil temperature, filter pressures, field pressures, ETo, and much more. Having access to historical data (when resources were plentiful) will likely help you allocate your now limited resources in the most efficient and effective way possible. In many cases, while observing historical data, you may find areas where resources were applied in abundance. Lastly, it is critical to correlate these remote data points within field observations.”
Jason Bills, General Manager, California, Aerobotics: “A key aspect to reduce water usage is to identify and address any leaks as soon as possible. Irrigation distribution uniformity is critical for optimal yields, and any unnecessary water usage (leaks) is wasted costs. Mitigating challenges related to water quality starts with knowing your water quality status. By identifying areas of variance, the necessary actions can be taken with the relevant role players to minimize the effects of poor irrigation water quality. Performing planned investigation missions on a regular basis would further contribute to closing the loop on any possible water quality-related concerns.”
Kathleen Glass, Vice President of Marketing, AquaSpy: “One thing that growers should be thinking about in particular when water and rain are scarce is soil salinity. Deciduous fruits, nuts, citrus, and avocado are among the most salt-sensitive crops. Manage salinity early on to prevent heavy contamination that can lead to loss of the farmland and also to ensure that the salinity isn’t hampering the crop’s ability to absorb the water you do apply. While many growers monitor the leaves of their fruit trees for signs of stress, monitoring the soil around the active root zone can be a better early indicator and provide a proactive way of managing the water intake of the plant. Take soil samples or use in-ground sensor technology to monitor Ec, which is a useful proxy for how much salt is present in the soil. Salinity can vary by soil layer and different crops will be more sensitive to salinity at specific depths.”
“Salt impacts plants in two ways. One, it reduces the plant’s ability to take up water, and two, plants and trees will actually take up some of these salts which will then damage tissues and cause other issues, such as leaf burn or defoliation. In severe cases it can cause the plants to die.”
“As soils become more saline, plants and trees become unable to draw as much water from the soil. Soil salinity can hamper crop water absorption so even if you are watering, the plant or tree can’t take in the available moisture. This is because the roots contain varying concentrations of ions (salts) that create a natural flow of water from the soil into the plant roots. As the level of salinity in the soil nears that of the roots, water no longer enters the root. When the soil salinity levels are high enough, the water in the roots is pulled back into the soil. The plants then are unable to take in enough water to grow. Even with crops that aren’t necessarily salt sensitive, increasing soil salinity can become an issue.”
John Rowley, Rotator Product Manager-Marketing and Sales, Nelson Irrigation: “If you are using micro sprinklers that are more than five years old, consider replacing them with a flow-regulated spinner with flow control nozzles. Many micro sprinklers contain small rubber wafers used to regulate flow. It is very common to find that irrigators over the years of use lose or remove these wafers when cleaning plugged nozzles. This results in very uneven watering from tree to tree and also from sprinkler to sprinkler. Find a micro sprinkler with a flow control nozzle which is quickly and easily cleaned when plugged. This provides big savings in irrigation maintenance costs. Also, instead of changing your sprinkler system to drip, use a spinner with a limited radius plate to effectively spread the water to a similar area as would a drip system.”
“Use soil moisture monitoring to learn the ideal run time for each irrigation set. The object is to prevent the application of too much water for each irrigation by watering only long enough to fill the rooting depth. When going through this exercise with your irrigation system, growers will discover that the ideal run time is not either 12 or 24 hours per irrigation set in most situations. Therefore, automating the operation of turning the valves on and off is required. Irrigators check systems during work hours for leaks and other problems and then allow the automated system to change the valves in the night or other hours when they are not on the farm. Your irrigation system can be quickly and easily automated by installing hydraulic valves with the TWIG wireless automation equipment. This equipment can easily be installed and maintained by growers. The controller that schedules runs times for each valve is easy to learn and set up. The controller is app based, and when the controller is connected to the internet using a cell modem, the system can be monitored and controlled from your phone at any location.”
Oz Ben-David, Vice President, Revenue and Business Development, Phytech: “Digital transformation is not nice to have but a necessity, and with the new SGMA (Sustainable Groundwater Management Act) already being deployed in many areas, customers need the tools to adapt to the new reality. Phytech’s IoT and plant-AI platform, with monitoring and automation capabilities and agronomic support, helps growers address those challenges head on. First, by directly measuring trees’ water demand via our network of dendrometers (tree-sensors), we’re helping growers save 20% to 25% of water usage, every year, compared to UC Davis recommendations. That’s a lot of water. Second, our automation as a service feature and complete hydraulic monitoring makes it easier to apply the irrigation recommendations and achieve operational excellence, where every drop is being counted — and counts.”
Hylon Kaufmann, Director, Business Development and Marketing, Ranch Systems: “Growers ask me about the current and future conditions and restrictions they are facing and how environmental and field monitoring can help them. Many have been using ET and general environmental data for years. The difference between having a system in your field or orchard vs. the average data provided by a weather monitoring site several miles away and manually managing irrigation now makes a difference. Having a monitoring system linked to the irrigation system so real-time decisions can be made on when, the quantity, and how the water is delivered all provide the benefit of maximizing every drop of water.
This also aids in maximizing the use of traditional inputs of crop protection and nutrients. The benefits of using technology may mean the deference of surviving the shortages with a crop for the future or not. When it comes to the regulatory accountability, having field specific data for everything from soil moisture, environmental conditions, and water applied will be critical. Data will be king!”
“We are seeing more and more permanent crop growers wanting to install remote monitoring and control as a pre-plant activity or with the planting. The costs of water and labor for manually managing the first one or two years of a crop now outweigh the spreading of infrastructure costs over a two- to three-year span. Now with the surface water shortages and groundwater restrictions they are facing, being able to manage their water efficiently with data from Day 1 of a new planting has become a game changer. Every drop counts!”
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