Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1286027
A L M O N D O R C H A R D 2 0 2 5 G O A L S WATER USE Almond Board of California 4 the tree, and the system's application rate. The software would then recommend an irrigation schedule based on those factors and our desired result. In this instance, we selected Variable Rate Irrigation to best fit our needs," Martin said. How to build your system Franz Niederholzer, University of California (UC) Cooperative Extension farm advisor in Colusa, Sutter and Yuba counties, said there is significant value in having precise control of an irrigation system. "Automated irrigation is the future. Water is expensive and effective irrigation is critical to orchard health and production, so growers should set themselves up to irrigate as efficiently and strategically as possible. Plus, there are parts of automated irrigation that allow growers to monitor their irrigation from a distance. Overall, it's an insurance policy that allows growers to be sure their irrigation is going as planned without having to be in the orchard to see the water leave the hose," Niederholzer said. Niederholzer emphasized that while VRI isn't for everybody, it does distribute water more efficiently – and maintain more uniform tree moisture status – across defined areas of different soil textures in the same orchard. However, knowing where to begin will allow growers to find the system that works best for them. Martin said that he narrowed his selection to implementing VRI by first collecting data from the orchard – listening to the orchard's needs and doing what he could to address them. "We used sonar to map the electric conductivity of the soil. Once it was mapped, we determined sampling locations that represented larger economical areas and whether they should be differentiated to determine water holding capacity, fertility, texture, layering and salts," Martin said. "After that, we took a hard look at how we wanted to design a system that worked for all the soil Continue on page 5 According to Martin, automated irrigation systems can change a grower or irrigator's role "from just running irrigation to really monitoring the performance and giving feedback." What about Distribution Uniformity? Valve control and distribution uniformity (DU) work hand in hand. Devol and Martin both stressed the importance of having high DU – or uniformity of distributed water across the entire orchard – prior to establishing specific water goals for an orchard. Testing DU regularly is also important to ensure everything in the system is working correctly – if a system has low DU, growers should determine the causes and solutions to prevent over- and under-irrigation. Good DU will ensure that the entire orchard benefits from more precise water allocation as a result of automated irrigation, mainly, valve control. "Running a DU test will show you all the locations where there are system problems," Devol said. "A grower can have a great irrigation design, but if they have a poorly maintained system with plugging or pressure problems they're never going to reach their water goal."