By Deborah Hamlin, CAE, FASAE, IA CEO
With 2020 officially behind us — and as we reach a full year of managing life and business during a global pandemic — the Irrigation Association (IA) is looking back at the success of new endeavours from last year, while looking ahead to opportunities in 2021.
Like many other organizations, the IA changed course and found new and different ways to continue offering its informative and educational content in a virtual format so that anyone could access it from anywhere. Although we were embarking on somewhat new and uncharted territory, the surprising outcome was that these new offerings were able to reach a broader audience with a wider variety of content. Education goes virtual With the cancellation of the 2020 Irrigation Show, the IA developed an all-virtual Education Week+. The Agriculture Industry Insights webinar series spanned six months — from October 2020 to March 2021. People could tune in to a live webinar or watch the recorded version at a later time that fit in their schedule or time zone. All of the Industry Insights webinars are available for purchase to watch online at www.irrigation.org/webinar_series. As of mid-February, 459 individuals had registered to participate in this series. With an unprecedented selection of topics covered, there was a webinar touching on nearly every aspect of the industry. Offering these webinars has been a great way to broaden the organization’s scope, while allowing people to avoid costly or unsafe travel. The IA hosted its first virtual conference — the Agricultural Irrigation Summit — in November 2020. This four-hour event featured top irrigation company leaders, a panel of producers and speakers representing the ag industry. The success of that first virtual event propelled the IA through a variety of additional conferences throughout the end of 2020 and into 2021, including a Women in Irrigation Conference, an Irrigation 20/20 event, a Landscape Lighting Conference, a Leadership Summit and a Landscape Technology Conference. Each event provided unique content reaching various segments of the irrigation industry, and anyone interested in the topic was able to register and attend conveniently from their own location. With the positive feedback received and the availability and ease of technology, the IA hopes to host more similar events in the future.
New product contest The IA held its annual new product contest virtually in 2020 for the first time ever. The popular contest features ag and landscape irrigation products entering the market in the last year, and it is usually held during the Irrigation Show. By going virtual, the new products and technologies entered in the contest were given expanded coverage through dedicated product profile pages on the IA’s Education Week+ website. Thirty-one new products and technologies were entered in five agriculture, landscape and specialty categories. Products were evaluated based on innovation, design quality, increased water/resource-use efficiency, ease of use and product life expectancy. Official judging was conducted via Zoom, and video presentations of all products are available online.
The winner of the agriculture irrigation category is the All-Flo Pressure Regulator by Nelson Irrigation. The Nelson All-Flo Pressure Regulator has several unique design features that reduce plugging, minimize friction loss and increase accuracy compared to previous designs. It also has increased flow capacity to reduce inventory and installed system cost.
The winner of the agriculture specialty category is Sweet Spot Drip Tape by Toro. Sweet Spot is a 6/8-inch ID Aqua-Traxx drip tape. With Sweet Spot, growers get the perfect tape to split the difference between 5/8- and 7/8-inch ID tape, enabling them to achieve longer runs than 5/8-inch tape and lower costs than 7/8-inch tape.
International collaboration The IA was pleased to play a part in the international irrigation stage through two specific events in 2020. The European Irrigation Association hosted a virtual European Irrigation Forum in November. The conference was a success, with approximately 75 participants from European countries, China, India, Russia, United States and Israel. I was invited to present on the Irrigation Association’s multiple activities and the impact of 2020’s events on the U.S. irrigation industry. I also participated the Irrigation Association of China’s 2020 annual meeting that was held in December. The livestreamed event gathered over 200 representatives of IA China’s membership companies along with governmental officers, industrial experts and guest speakers. Through a prerecorded and translated presentation, I discussed the impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. irrigation industry and how the association has handled it. Though online meeting platforms have been around for years, the unique circumstances of 2020 drove this type of collaboration and information-sharing among those involved in irrigation worldwide. With technology that is available — and now readily used by everyone — there is no reason why these types of international events can’t be continued in the future.
Looking ahead to 2021 The IA began offering all-virtual education out of necessity. Although we had hosted podcasts, webinars and learning-on-demand before 2020, it was nothing compared to what was offered following the onset of the pandemic. The response from the Education Week+ programming has been very positive, with interest in it continuing. The formats available for this type of education will only improve and expand, allowing us to provide even better ways to connect with the industry and provide beneficial education and valuable information about the latest in the industry. Watch www.irrigationshow.org and www.irrigation.org for information to come about our new exciting offerings.
At the same time, we look forward to the day when we can all gather together safely face to face. The IA is currently making plans for the 2021 Irrigation Show and Education Week in San Diego, California, Dec. 6-10. Special arrangements are being made to allow for social distancing and other adjustments to ensure the safety of attendees. Moving ahead, we hope to continue to provide a hybrid of options to reach as far into our industry as possible. By offering unique opportunities online, as well as in person, we can further our mission to promote the efficient use of irrigation. ●
Deborah Hamlin, CAE, FASAE, IA CEO
At the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre in Vineland Station, Ontario (Canada), Brian Lynch is looking into smart irrigation and how robotics can make growing more efficient. Lynch’s goal is to make irrigation more efficient. “Growers have so much information that sometimes they don’t even realize they are using it to decide if, or if not, to water plants on a given day,” he says in a story published in Greenhouse Management magazine, noting that specifically applies to herbs and flowers grown in pots vs. plants grown hydroponically or in a vertical farm. “I’ve seen growers take a chunk of soil out, squeeze it in their hand and, if enough water drips through, then they know it doesn’t need any water. Or they just pick up the plant to see if it’s heavy or not (to see if the plant needs water). It’s a judgment call.” The research scientist in field robotics calls that process “subjective” – leaving it up to factors like the weather, the grower’s energy level on a given day, or any of the several factors that go into making the decision to water or not inexact. Oftentimes, this can lead to overwatering for fear of not giving a plant enough – which can lead to disease and pest issues. Smart irrigation counters this by using sensors stuck right into the soil to determine when to water or not. With sensor data – specifically
soil moisture, plus environmental data that growers may already be collecting in the greenhouse – the decision can be made. According to Lynch, there’s a treasure trove of data already being stored by many greenhouses today. For the purposes of his projects, temperature and humidity are the two data layers most useful and found universally in greenhouses that are utilizing sensors. Light is another data point that is often easily collected. There has also been some research done at Vineland into correlations between carbon dioxide (CO2) and electrical connectivity (EC) in the soil. In terms of applying sensors, Lynch says there are some challenges. For one, in some bigger greenhouses, plants are placed on long benches that can have different needs on one end or the other. Airflow, he says, is one thing that can affect each plant differently depending on where it’s located – specifically on the edges. “Sometimes benches can be tilted and that can be invisible to the eye, but if you run water down it, then you’ll see run in a specific direction, thus making some plants get more water than others,” Lynch says. “So what they showed us is that you won’t necessarily be able to get away with just a few sensors – you’ll need more to make the best decisions possible. And that starts to drive up the cost.” Lynch notes that one of the biggest benefits of smart irrigation is to save growers money, specifically on labour. In one Canadian commercial greenhouse for instance, the system reduced water usage by 15 percent and saved CDN$2,800 (about USD$2,184) in labour costs per acre of greenhouse space. But if more
sensors are needed – and one estimate called for up to 2,000 sensors to cover a medium-sized greenhouse space – then it becomes harder to justify the cost. The next step, Lynch says, is moving towards using more of the data already collected by the greenhouse and developing a decision support tool for growers. This model would rely on hardware already in place in the greenhouse and use data such as humidity, moisture and temperature to infer the soil’s real-time water moisture level. That data then will be used to map patterns in the greenhouse’s climate and water conditions. From there, this can allow a grower to make a detailed prediction on whether and when to irrigate or not.
Done in partnership with Dutch company LetsGrow.com, this model also has the added benefit of not having to worry about sensors being knocked over and placed properly – leading to inaccurate data collection. That model, though, is still being fully fleshed out and fine-tuned for wider use by growers. Lynch, in the meantime, will keep working to push it forward with the end goal of making growers more efficient.
The first Vineland-led smart irrigation project focused on sensors, but its scope is currently expanding.
Photograph: Vineland Research and Innovation Centre
A research project by Lethbridge College (Alberta, Canada) researchers is breaking new ground in the study of subsurface drip fertigation (SDF).
The two-year study is led by Dr. Rezvan Karimi Dehkordi, research associate on the Mueller Applied Research in Irrigation Science team and funded by a grant from the Canadian Agricultural Partnership. It explores how using SDF, a method that applies water and fertilizer directly to the rootzones of plants, affects uptake of nutrients crop yields. Subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) is gaining popularity in Alberta, currently covering 1,090 hectares of field crop area. While SDI has been shown to provide benefits such as more efficient water use compared to surface irrigation methods, there are few scientific studies on subsurface fertigation specific to Alberta crops and soil conditions.
“Most of the data we have is from the U.S. on crops like alfalfa, cotton and soybeans,” says Karimi. “We don’t have enough information for Alberta farmers specifically on the best timing and rate of application. Without independent local data, it is not possible to provide realistic scenarios to agricultural producers about the value of SDF.” Karimi worked with First Fruit Farms near Lomond, Alberta to test different fertilizer applications on durum wheat in 2019 and pinto beans 2020; she then compared the results with a control crop that did not receive any fertilizer. The 2019 study found durum wheat crops treated with subsurface fertilizers had higher levels of nitrogen and phosphorus uptakes as well as higher yields. However, the 2020 study of pinto beans found no significant difference between the study and control crops, which Karimi says is due in part to the wet conditions in the 2020 growing season. For First Fruit Farms owner Matthew Wiens, the research partnership was an opportunity to validate some of his own observations from using SDF. “Dr. Karimi and her team provided a lot of the data collection the sampling and counting,” Wiens said. “Instead of just getting a yield result at the end, we could watch how the fertigation was affecting the plants throughout the season so in the end we’re starting to better pinpoint the timing of the fertigation and when is it the most helpful within that plant's growth cycle.” Karimi says this study is a first step in determining whether the agronomic and economic benefits of subsurface irrigation and fertigation are enough to justify the higher cost of these systems compared to the alternatives. “It would be great to be able to better quantify exactly how much water we can save, how much we can increase the yield for different crops like winter wheat or canola, and the best time to apply fertilizer,” says Karimi. “Longer term experiments across multiple crops would also help with adoption of SDI technology in southern Alberta.”
Dr. Rezvan Karimi Dehkordi, research associate on the Mueller Applied Research in Irrigation Science team.
Photo: Lethbridge College
