Five tips to save water in agriculture

How can we save water in agriculture? Here there are the key aspects that we should bear in mind in order to save water while using irrigation systems.

1. The combination of knowledge and skills is essential. For this reason, farmers are asked to:

• Be aware of water-efficient that depends on the relation between available water for plants and irrigation water supplied to cultivation.
• Be aware of the different irrigation systems in order to make informed choices also according to orographic and edaphic of fields.
• Bear in mind that the efficiency of drip irrigation systems – assured by VALDUCCI products – is 90-95%. Rotorain (coils) efficiency goes from 60% to 80% (it is a higher range because of environmental conditions), while submersion irrigation systems’ efficiency is about 40-50%.

2. Understanding the cultivation water needs in its stages of development allows irrigating by keeping optimum levels of soil moisture. This will enable the plants to use less energy for absorbing soil solutions-, which means, “eating and drinking” free- so that metabolism is able to grow and produce. The wide range of VALDUCCI products for drip irrigation allows optimizing the water/soil/field capacity relation of the same plant organism, since the available typologies (tape diameters, dripper spacing, flow rate) can meet the real cultivation needs for the quantity of evotranspirated water according to the stages of development and environmental conditions.

3. In windy zones or where evaporation requires a further increase of water efficiency, or even when birds can damage the tape placed on the surface, it is recommended to evaluate the sub-irrigation technique. VALDUCCI drip tape is suitable for this purpose with high performances.

4. It is very important to take the synergy offered by a localized irrigation system and fertirrigation into account. Water makes nutrients available directly to the roots, without wasting none of the used resources and without contaminating aquifer.

5. Drip irrigation allows using rainwater, which is collected where possible with a minimum energy impact – thanks to VALDUCCI drip tape efficiency of filtering and supplying this kind of water.