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Irrigation Management Systems

Several systems now offer a variety of data (often in real time) about how vines are using water.

by Andrew Adams

HORTAU IRRIGATION MANAGEMENT
hortau.com
San Luis Obispo, Calif.-based Hortau Irrigation Management’s system is based on soil moisture monitoring and used for a variety crops including pistachios, berries and row crops. Gil Luera, Hortau’s Central Coast regional manager, said the company monitors more than 10,000 acres of wine grapes in the Paso Robles, Calif., region alone.

He said the system is based on data from sensors measuring soil moisture tension, which is widely considered to be the most accurate method for determining overall soil moisture. Luera said Hortau uses its own sophisticated tensimeters, which are buried in the soil and do not need to be adjusted or calibrated.

Hortau owns and installs all the equipment for growers and determines the best locations to place sensors that provide representative data for entire vineyards or certain blocks. Luera said the company also works with clients on interpreting and using the data so they can make the best irrigation decisions and also fully understand what the system is telling them. “What differentiates us is that we’re measuring water tension in real time,” he said. “With that being said, we’re able to be proactive with that measurement.”

Luera said the company’s system can pinpoint not just the depth to which water is reaching but the lateral movement as well. For vineyards, the system provides the data growers can use to identify just the right amount of stress from water deficit they want for a particular block or variety. “With our system we’re able to quantify that stress point,” he said.

That data becomes more useful year after year, and Luera said the company’s staff works with clients to help make irrigation decisions and create management plans. The soil-moisture data collected by the Hortau system can also be coupled with weather information to aid in scheduling decisions.

Data is transmitted via a cellular system to Hortau’s servers, where it’s available to clients through any web-enabled device.

Pricing is based on a full survey of the vineyard that includes determining the range of soils as well as what the client may need. Hortau offers varying tiers of pricing based on equipment costs. The company will work with any size farm, but they typically recommend one system to monitor every 40 to 50 acres.

AGTECH: VINEYARD
itkweb.com, verizonenterprise.com
The French company iTK first came to the United States with a vineyard-monitoring system known as Vintel. The company specializes in crop modeling and during the past 15 years has partnered with companies such as Bayer Cropscience, Syngenta and Land O’Lakes.

The company’s vice president and general manager, John Williamson, has worked in vineyard irrigation for 15 years and set up trials in the United States on more than 100 vineyard blocks. He said those trials proved promising, and the company was poised to increase the scope of its work in 2016, when it was approached by Verizon. He said the cellular company is looking to diversify its operations as the cell phone market begins to plateau and has picked agriculture—and specifically vineyards—as one of those areas on which to focus.

AgTech: Vineyard is the result of Verizon partnering with iTK. The new system uses Verizon’s cellular network as well as the company’s new “ThingSpace” platform, which was developed to leverage the relatively new concept of the “Internet of Things,” in which millions of sensors and devices communicate directly with each other. Verizon is developing a streamlined system to get vineyard data directly from sensors to the cellular network without needing as many—or possibly any—costly gateway units that link sensors with cell towers.

In addition to the partnership with Verizon, what really sets iTK’s system apart, says president Eric Jallas, Ph.D., is the process-based system that models plant performance. ITK first developed models for row crops and then started working in vineyards at the request of the French government to create a method to help growers reduce their pesticide use. ITK’s team then spent several years turning functions such as photosynthesis into mathematical equations. “When you integrate all these equations together, then you can predict what will happen in the field,” he said.

For the U.S. wine industry, iTK built a system to help with irrigation decisions. Based on grape variety, root depth, soil type and texture, iTK can predict the water needs of a vineyard block and make recommendations about when and how much to irrigate. The system requires flowmeters to know how much water has been applied and real time weather information to determine evapotranspiration (ET).

Based on those data inputs, the system’s model can provide vine stress information that Williamson said is as accurate as daily pressure bomb readings. “AgTech provides a very easy interface to see exactly where the vine stress is in every block,” he said.

Jallas said iTK is currently working on a model for predicting the risk of powdery mildew and has plans for other functions that would tell growers how water and fertilizer use could affect the final yeast assimilable nitrogen levels in grapes or phenolics such as tannin and anthocyanins.

CAMALIE NETWORKS
camalienetworks.com
Mark Holler is the owner of Camalie Vineyards in Napa Valley and developed his own wireless system to measure and manage his irrigation. In 2003, he started with a weather station and some soil moisture sensors but steadily expanded that using early wireless technology to monitor other vineyard blocks through the same system.

In 2008, he launched Camalie Networks to market similar types of systems to other vineyard companies. Holler developed his network with open-source, off-shelf components. “My core development strategy was just to use what other people have already invented,” he said.

Holler upgraded various agricultural sensors to work with eKo Pro nodes by tech supplier Crossbow. The company still maintains a few of these older systems, but now offers its CS3 system. Holler developed the CS3 system himself, and it is based on a new series of field stations that range from simple data acquisition to more complex tasks such as valve control, remote video monitoring and weather monitoring. “To run an irrigation system, one typically needs at least three nodes plus an internet gateway; one node to sense soil moistures in the field far from the irrigation manifold, one to sense irrigation parameters like pressure and water flow, and one to open valves and control pumps,” he said.

The data can be accessed directly through the gateway, but most customers use a web interface that features a vineyard map or dashboard with all the relevant data. Camalie’s system includes an upfront cost of around $2,500 for the equipment, plus a charge of $39 per month for the web service to store data and host a user interface.

TULE TECHNOLOGIES
tuletechnologies.com
Tom Shapland, founder and CEO of Tule Technologies, said the company’s primary goal is to help growers answer two questions every day: How stressed are my vines relative to where I want them to be? And, how much should I irrigate?

To that end, Tule’s system provides accurate evapotranspiration data, which can be used to create just the right amount of vineyard stress to reach quality or quantity goals. Shapland said growers can use the system to vary irrigation for certain vineyard blocks to reach goals based on yields or grape quality.

“With our device, we measure the actual crop water use. We account for the weather, and we account for the canopy size. And now that we have three out of the four, we hone in on the stress,” he said.

The Tule Actual ET sensor communicates with the company’s services via a cellular connection. Users then get their field data through a mobile app, web-based dashboard or email reports.

Shapland said the company will work with growers to pinpoint exactly where to place the evapotranspiration sensors and how many they will need to meet their irrigation management needs. Pricing starts at $1,500 per sensor per year.

Tule can provide additional training and tutorials about the system, but Shapland said his main goal is to provide actionable information and leave the irrigation decisions to the clients. “Growers know their fields better than anyone else,” he said.

The sensors provide the data accurately and quickly so growers can make more informed decisions rather than waiting for the vines to become visibly stressed.

Shapland said Tule has about 600 sensors in vineyards monitoring about 3,000 acres throughout California, with most of them in Napa, Sonoma, San Joaquin and San Luis Obispo counties. The company also works with a variety of other crops, including almonds.

FARM DATA SYSTEMS
farmdatasystems.com
Jack Coots, regional director for Farm Data Systems (FDS), said the company uses hardware from several suppliers to get the data needed for their clients. “We’re not beholden to a complete system,” he said. “We aggregate systems and data-management software vendors to meet the needs of the growers.”

Coots said the first step is to determine exactly what a grower needs, whether it’s just the equipment to measure one crucial piece of data or a comprehensive irrigation plan. “Often growers don’t know what they need or want,” he said. “We spend a lot of time on education and what to expect from equipment.”

What a client may need can range from a few sensors to an entire telemetry network. The company can set up networks for one property or link multiple, separate sites together by radio, wireless or cellular systems.

Once a system is in place to gather data, the information is processed through the irrigation-scheduling software Probe Schedule to develop a site-specific plan. “The software is really the interface between the data and the customer,” Coots said.

Growers can view the data through a smartphone or tablet. FDS staff will then work with growers to make sure the system does what is intended. Coots said FDS accomplishes this through consultations about the data and “ground trothing,” in which FDS performs field tests.

Because the systems vary from client to client, so does pricing. Coots said it depends on the type of network needed and if the client seeks additional consulting and input from FDS staff.

FRUITION SCIENCES
fruitionsciences.com
Sebastien Payen and Thibault Scholasch founded Fruition Sciences in 2007 in Oakland, Calif., and the team opened an office in Montpellier, France, two years later. The founding partners developed a unique system to monitor vine water use through small heaters and thermocouples attached directly to vines. The copper heater warms the vine, and the thermocouples record the temperature before and after the application of heat. The difference between the two temperature readings indicates how much water is moving through the vine.

The water or “sap flow” data is uploaded every 15 minutes through a solar-powered data logger to Fruition Sciences’ servers, which interpret it using the company’s own models. The data is available in real time to any user with a web-enabled device. The company’s dashboard provides an instant look at the levels of stress in a vineyard and will issue alerts if vines are approaching a critical point. Using its own mathematical models, Fruition Sciences determines evapotranspiration and vine stress.

By focusing on how the vine is actually performing, Fruition Sciences claims its system is the only one on the market that really gauges how weather and soil conditions are affecting the vine. In addition to sap-flow monitoring, the company also offers winter Physiocap mapping, in which it scans a dormant vineyard to map shoot diameter, number of shoots per vine and vineyard biomass. Grow ers can then use the data to make better pruning decisions toward balance and uniformity.

PURESENSE
jainsusa.com
In 2015, irrigation equipment supplier Jain purchased Fresno, Calif.-based PureSense, which was one of the first field-monitoring and irrigation-management providers. The system is based on soil moisture monitoring through either tensimeters or capacitance probes that measure soil-moisture content, although the supplier claims its software can work with most field-monitoring equipment.

Data is processed with PureSense analytics and displayed via various widgets through a dashboard that can be accessed with any web-capable device. The system can provide graphs on water infiltration as applied water moves through the soil as well as soil moisture status and a summary of irrigation performance.

The field data can also be used to compare applied water to reference evapotranspiration, weather history and rain water versus applied water.

An irrigation plan can also be automated with the system’s scheduler, which features recommendations based on local weather as well as soil profile, crop and irrigation system. The schedule can then be checked with field data to ensure the application is run correctly and on time.

RANCH SYSTEMS
ranchsystems.com
Founded in 2005, Ranch Systems was one of the first to incorporate cloud-based data in 2007. The company makes gateways that can be used to host a variety of sensors, controllers, weather stations, data logging and cameras for remote monitoring and management.

Business development manager Hylon Kaufmann said Ranch Systems is open source, so growers can also use whatever type of sensors, controllers or weather stations they want to use with the telemetry system.

A vineyard system could be comprised of soil-moisture sensors, leaf-moisture sensors, temperature sensors situated above and below the canopy, a weather station and irrigation controls. Data from all of the sensors flow through a node such as the RS-130 up to the cloud. A grower can monitor the data through a smartphone or computer and then make agronomic and irrigation decisions based on real-time data.

The same node can be used to activate irrigation pumps, and the cameras can be used to ensure everything is working as it’s supposed to. Growers can also use Ranch Systems’ network to run pre-programed irrigation schedules.

Kaufmann said the company’s staff will make sure clients know how to use their equipment but don’t make any specific agronomic or irrigation recommendations. Ranch Systems equipment is available directly through the company as well as approved resellers.
 

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