By Megan Lally, senior marketing coordinator, acquisitions, SiteOne Landscape Supply, and chair, IA Expo Advisory Committee
The Irrigation Association (IA) invites you to join the irrigation industry in Las Vegas, Nevada, Dec. 5-9, for the 2022 Irrigation Show and Education Week. Plans are in full swing for this annual trade show and education program focused on advancing irrigation. Registration is open, with the best rates available through Oct. 31.
Those attending this year’s show will see innovative products and smart solutions, find new suppliers, learn about current business trends and irrigation best practices, and network with industry leaders. If you want to learn more about the latest products, practices and technologies in agriculture irrigation, then the 2022 Irrigation Show and Education Week is for you.
20 years celebrating new products One of the most exciting and popular features of the Irrigation Show is the annual new product contest. In 2022, this contest is celebrating its 20th year of showcasing the newest irrigation products and technologies to hit the market. With its hybrid format, the contest judging takes place online before the show. The products entered in the contest will be showcased on the Irrigation Show website, and the public is welcome to watch the online presentations during the judging the week of Oct. 10 free of charge. All products will also be displayed on the Irrigation Show floor, and the winners will be announced live on Dec. 8. New this year, winners will be selected in three tiers — gold, silver and bronze.
The new product contest showcase on the show floor only touches the surface of what the exhibit hall has to offer. With over 160 exhibitors, the show brings all the best the irrigation industry has to offer under one roof. The exhibit hall provides the unique opportunity to see products, technologies and services firsthand and get your questions answered in person by knowledgeable representatives.
As an added bonus, in 2022 the IA is co-locating with the National Ground Water Association’s (NGWA) Groundwater Week. While walking through the Irrigation Show, attendees will also get access to the NGWA show floor and its exhibits.
Live events on the show floor Those browsing the exhibit hall will experience a high-energy environment with a variety of live events during the two days of the trade show.
Last year’s exciting new Innovation Hub, Innovation Row and Pitch Competition will return in 2022. Innovation Hub is a special area of the exhibit hall full of action, including award announcements and a variety of product demos and presentations. This area also hosts the Pitch Competition, where irrigation startup companies featured in Innovation Row are offered the opportunity to share their technologies with the industry. New in 2022, Innovation Hub will also host an IA Membership 101 session for those new to membership or interested in joining the association.
These exciting elements give you a peek into the future of our industry and how technology is continually advancing and allowing irrigation professionals to be more precise and efficient with irrigation water use.
We’ll wrap up the trade show with a Craft Brewfest event in the exhibit hall as the last day of the trade show winds down. Join us to make some brand-new connections as we toast another successful show.
Level-up your irrigation knowledge The Irrigation Show’s Education Week is known for offering the most comprehensive irrigation education program available during one week in one location. Whether it is learning core irrigation skills or exploring ways to improve your business practices, Education Week offers it all through Industry Insights and IA University. Many education opportunities offer CEUs, making the show the perfect place to work toward or maintain an IA certification.
Industry Insights is a series of presentations and panel discussions presented live throughout the week of the show, providing attendees with information on the latest research, innovations, regulatory complexities, career development, business management strategies, sustainability and more. The presentations are free to attend with registration to the show.
In-person IA University classes consist of core curriculum for fundamental skill sets. The classes are offered every year to ensure you and your employees have the foundational and practical skills necessary to design, install or maintain an irrigation system, as well as the business skills to manage a small irrigation company. These classes require an additional fee, and preregistration is encouraged to ensure a seat.
Connect in the “Entertainment Capital of the World” This year’s Irrigation Show location offers the ideal background to connect and network with those in the industry. Known as the Entertainment Capital of the World, Las Vegas offers nonstop excitement and a variety of entertainment venues.
The Irrigation Association has multiple events planned to help you meet and engage with likeminded peers in the industry while enjoying what the city has to offer. The Viva Las Vegas Reception kicks off the show in style, drawing everyone gathered for the event. We have also planned special events to connect specific groups of professionals, such as the women in irrigation breakfast, young professionals networking social, an IA member appreciation breakfast and more.
The IA is also offering a behind-the-scenes tour of the Bellagio Fountain. A fountain control engineer will provide an in-depth look at what it takes to put on one of the famed fountain shows at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino. Separate registration and fee are required for this tour.
Register now! 2022 Irrigation Show registration and housing are now open. A bonus in 2022 is that one low registration rate gives you access to the trade show floor, the social and networking events, and Industry Insights. Register by Oct. 31 to take advantage of early bird rates.
For instructions related to international travel and to register see HERE. We look forward to seeing you at the biggest and best trade show all about irrigation. ●
The University of Córdoba’s (UCO) hydraulics and irrigation group has developed a decision support system based on new technologies for the management of precision irrigation in greenhouse horticultural and outdoor woody crops.
Researchers Carmen Flores, Rafael González, Pilar Montesinos and Emilio Camacho, with the María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence, within the department of agronomy at the UCO (DAUCO), have developed an irrigation decision support system for the optimal scheduling of seven days of irrigation through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), based on climate predictions and information from humidity sensors and irrigation metres installed in the field, and information on the fields' intrinsic characteristics.
This tool, designed for outdoor woody and greenhouse horticultural crops, allows one not only to schedule their irrigation, but also to run an analysis of irrigation carried out over the course of a crop year, yielding a water footprint inventory of the crop in question.
"With all this information collected by the devices, an inventory of the water used is carried out, which, together with the data on the crop's water needs in the year, makes possible an analysis of the adequacy of the irrigation applied, which, in turn, facilitates the detection of inefficiencies," explained researcher Carmen Flores.
This model was tested at an orange plantation and on a greenhouse tomato crop, although it was also adapted for olive groves and other greenhouse horticultural crops, such as eggplant, pepper and cucumber.
In the case of tomatoes, it was found that the model's irrigation recommendation and the irrigation actually carried out in the greenhouse were practically the same, and were quite in line with the crop's real needs. However, in the case of the orange trees, the comparison between their management and the recommendations of the model developed revealed that, with the same consumption of irrigation water, differences in its management (in terms of the frequency and duration of irrigation) affected the use of water in the soil. It was also demonstrated that the employment of controlled deficit irrigation strategies makes it possible to reduce the use of water for irrigation by up to 20 percent.
"This system determines the optimal time to irrigate and the exact amount of water that the crop needs," noted Flores. In addition, thanks to the ICTs and the information acquired in real time by the monitoring devices installed in the field, the model updates the irrigation scheduling information daily, which varies according to the moisture content in the soil and weather and precipitation predictions. ●
Researchers who developed the new tool to manage irrigation.
Photo: University of Córdoba
Drought is one of the greatest threats to agricultural systems. One potential solution to enhancing crop resilience is the inoculation of seed with bacteria, aka. plant ‘probiotics’ that are known to improve a plant’s drought tolerance.
While scientists have identified many microbes that show promise in the lab, replicating their efficacy in agricultural field studies proves much more difficult, largely due to complex environmental variation in the real world.
New research spearheaded by Rebecca Bart, PhD, associate member, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and her colleagues tackled the challenge of bridging the gap between lab and field studies related to crop-microbial interactions and their influence on drought tolerance. Their work has the potential to accelerate crop adaptation to drought conditions and streamlines findings from the lab for farmers in the field. Their research, “Identification of beneficial and detrimental bacteria impacting sorghum responses to drought using multi-scale and multi-system microbe comparisons” and “Increased signal-to-noise ratios within experimental field trials by regressing spatially distributed soil properties as principal
components”, was recently published in ISME Journal and eLife, respectively.
The authors took a systems-level approach to identify microbes that affected drought response in sorghum, work that spanned “sterile, controlled environments” in the lab, to field experiments full of complex soil properties, uneven topography and nonuniform accumulation of water moisture. The team found that at least six microbes that caused root developmental defects in the lab – stunting the height of sorghum seedlings – were also negatively affecting sorghum growth in the field.
“The big advance here,” said corresponding author Bart, “is that we observed similar patterns in a controlled environment and in the field. That result tells us that our lab observations are real and relevant to agriculture.”
The research team also identified a new microbe that promoted root growth, a critical characteristic to improve crop resilience to drought.
The research, which took place over the course of the last five years, was not without its own challenges. “Environmental variation makes the real world a noisy place to conduct science,” wrote first author and Danforth Center Senior Data Scientist Jeffrey Berry. The authors needed to develop a model to account for confounding biological variables in field experiments – factors like soil pH and phosphate content, which can vary wildly across a field site. By combining giant, multivariate datasets from collaborators across several institutions, including at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Iowa State University, Washington State University, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Colorado State University and the Joint Genome Institute, Berry was able to use sophisticated computational models to understand and overcome variation in the field. The result was a first-of-its-kind statistical model that accounted for soil properties that influenced traits in both crops and microbes. The authors could now compare their results between the lab and field without worrying about how environmental variation might be altering their field observations
The team is beginning to replicate their methodology in other crops systems like maize, and future research plans for this work will be housed out of the Danforth Center’s new Subterranean Influences on Nitrogen and Carbon (SINC) Center, co-directed by Bart and three other Danforth Center members. SINC was established to better understand the symbiotic relationships between plants and microbes and their potential to reduce chemical nitrogen fertilizer used in agriculture.
This work was supported by funding from the United States Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Iowa State University. ●
Tanzania's National Irrigation Commission has signed agreements with contractors for the development of 21 irrigation schemes worth 182 billion Tanzanian shillings (about USD$78 million), covering 26,700 hectares of land in the country's seven regions.
Tanzania’s Minister for Agriculture, Hussein Bashe, said irrigation schemes to be implemented in the seven paddy producing regions will boost production of the crop to 97,300 tons annually. He added the construction of the irrigation schemes will go in tandem with the construction of dams for domestic and livestock use.
In June, Raymond Mndolwa, director general of the National Irrigation Commission, chaired a working session to review the five-year strategy of the National Irrigation Commission. He said the review and completion of the strategic plan is an important step for the National Irrigation Commission. The government goal is to reach 1.2 million hectares of irrigation by 2025. ●
Rivulis Pte. Ltd. and Jain Irrigation Systems Limited have entered into definitive transaction agreements to which Rivulis will acquire multiple overseas subsidiaries that consist of the international irrigation business of Jain Irrigation.
The combined entity will enable market coverage, allowing growers and business partners globally to benefit from extensive product and solution offerings, including digital farming services. The merged company will be called Rivulis (in alliance with Jain International), and will be led by current Rivulis CEO Richard Klapholz, with dual headquarters in Singapore and Israel.
According to a news release, the new company will lead the mass adoption of modern irrigation solutions and digital farming by growers and business partners globally through its focus on accessibility, innovation and sustainability. It will be comprised of 25 factories and 3,300 employees across six continents and 35 countries
“We anticipate that the merger with Rivulis will create a world leading player ideally placed to serve its global customer base thanks to its geographic footprint, breadth of offering as well as from technological depth and expertise in micro irrigation,” said Anil Jain, managing director of Jain Irrigation in a news release. “The combined entity will have a truly global presence in all relevant irrigation markets, enabling strategic growth and innovation that will further Jain Irrigation's broad vision of reaching more small and large growers by creating shared value."
Richard Klapholz, Rivulis CEO, said that Rivulis, before the merger, represented the combination of four companies, and through this merger, several more companies from Jain Irrigation's portfolio will be added, “cementing our role as a market consolidator and leader across the globe and creating a single company with a much stronger financial foundation.”
While benefitting from significant operational economies of scale and a dedicated, diverse employee base, “we will ensure that all commitments to our grower community and to our combined business partners are maintained and further strengthened,” added Klapholz. “Our goal is to ensure that all our customers will continue to be successful and benefit from a broader offering, leading industry brands, expanded manufacturing base and the support of leading irrigation services businesses.” ●
Lumo, a new U.S.-based agtech company focused on water sustainability, has raised USD$2.1 million in pre-seed funding and plans to allocate funds toward commercialization of its irrigation technology.
The company states its system offers a first of its kind wireless, cloud-managed water valve network that will enable growers to optimize water usage to improve crop quality and reduce overhead costs. Presently a number of Lumo's irrigation systems are being tested in vineyards and orchards in Sonoma County, California.
Lumo was launched by partners Devon Wright (CEO), John Hinnegan (CTO) and water technology inventor, Henry Halimi (R&D)
The $2.1 million pre-seed funding was led by Fall Line Capital. The funding will be allocated toward the continued development and
commercialization of Lumo's smart irrigation system. Looking ahead, Lumo states it will play a key role in creating a digital water record that could be used in the future to unlock enhanced water reporting and trading on a global scale. ●
Ceres Imaging has entered a long-term partnership with Soiltech Wireless under which Soiltech Wireless will deliver critical enabling technology for the Ceres platform which helps farmers build more profitable and sustainable operations.
Ceres will use Soiltech Wireless technology to deliver unique water optimization and irrigation insights to their customers.
Powered by high-resolution aerial imagery and advanced analytics, the Ceres platform is built to optimize irrigation strategies, improve crop health and enhance profitability for farms.
“We are excited to partner with Ceres to continue to build a powerful suite of imagery solutions to help customers cover more ground, make the most of resources, and focus time and attention where it is most needed,” said Ehsan Soltan, CEO of Soiltech Wireless. “Similarly, our team at Soiltech Wireless has repeatedly demonstrated that farmer success is the keystone to unlocking economic value throughout the agricultural supply chain and enabling the enhancement of economic drivers from seed to shelf. We are proud to be teamed with Ceres to deliver value for growers.”
This integration will also help to provide context for aerial imagery through holistic field intelligence and consolidate the number of apps growers need in order to access critical business insights. ●
