Placement of Additional Drip Lines to Enhance Soil Fumigation and Irrigation Efficiency and Minimize Environmental Impacts
1. Placement of additional drip lines
to enhance soil fumigation and
irrigation efficiency and minimize
environmental impacts
Oleg Daugovish, Ben Faber, Surendra Dara, Mike Cahn,
Steve Koike and Husein Ajwa (Univ. of California
Cooperative Extension farm advisors and specialist)
2. Collaborators:
• Dole (Watsonville), Manzanita Berry Farms (Santa
Maria), and Ito Bros. (Oxnard), and Solimar Farms
(Camarillo)
• California Strawberry Commission
• Farm Bureau, Resource Conservation Districts, Natural
Resource Conservation Service, United Water and other
stakeholders
3. California strawberries
• $ 2.6 billion annual value in California (~90% of US)
• #6 crop in California
• Neighbors: urban and natural environments
4. Two problems: lack of water and soil pathogens
Macrophomina
phaseolina
Fusarium
oxysporum
6. From United Water CD report:
Water Pumping through pipeline, Ventura County, CA
9. Why are sprinklers used instead of drip?
Used for other purposes: wet
soil before bed shaping,
‘settling furrows and beds’,
frost protection, fast plant
hydration during hot wind
conditions
Used for fumigation and
fertigation only
Water delivered into
planting holes from the top
aids in leaching salts
Water delivered at drip
burial depth, salts above
drip not leached
Immediate plant-water
contact aids secondary
root development
Risk of plants ‘drying out’
SPRINKLERS DRIP
14. Drip Fumigation
• Camarillo (200 lbs /A InLine): native Fusarium
oxysporum in soil: no symptoms in plants
observed as of May 15
• Watsonville (300 lbs /A Piclor 60): buried
inoculum – no survivorship in 2 or 4 lines per
bed at 2 depth for both M. phaseolina and F.
oxysporum
• Oxnard: did not fumigate with 4 lines but
irrigated with 4 or 3 in season
21. Plant dry biomass, Dec 12
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Surface 4 drips Buried 4 drips Sprinkler
g/plant
Dry biomass of new leaves
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
Surface 4 drips Buried 4 drips Sprinkler
g/plant
Dry biomass of new roots
0
5
10
15
Surface 4 drips Buried 4 drips Sprinkler
g/plant
Dry biomass of old crowns
22. 0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
16-Jan 23-Jan 30-Jan 6-Feb 13-Feb 20-Feb 27-Feb 6-Mar 13-Mar 20-Mar 27-Mar
g/20plamts
Marketable fruit yield- Oxnard
Surface 4 drips-only
Buried 4 drips- only
Sprinkler, then 3 drips
total by Apr 1
9,622
10,548
8,696
23. Water use/acre by Nov 12 (before
removal of sprinklers):
• 4-DRIP block: 11, 200 gal (by drip) + 4, 060 gal
(2 sprinkler runs during Santa Ana conditions,
1st week of Nov) = 15,260 gal
• SPRINKLER block: 47, 250 gal (collected by
cans)
24. Sprinklers for cooling plants
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
0 2 4 6
oC
minutes after end of overhead irrigation
Temperature
Air Leaf
End of sprinkler irrigation
25. Santa Maria and Watsonville
• 20-30% water savings (reduced sprinkler + 4
drips vs standard sprinkler)
• Similar among treatments: plant
performance, soil water and salt parameters
26. Outreach so far:
• 3 field days (14 speakers) and 2 meetings (380
participants),
• >30 individual contacts with growers and industry
stakeholders
• Electronic: web site and blog >6000 hits/month
• Ventura County Star: 2 publications, reached >0.5 mln
people (paper and on-line)
• Video on UCCE –Ventura web site (loaded May 25th)
• Doubling number of tapes included in UC water
quality BMP guidelines publication (bi-lingual)
31. Grower responses:
• “improved fumigant distribution/wetting pattern in 4-
drip beds” (Solimar Farms)
• “next year plan is to increase area with 4-drip use for
establishment at least 10 times” (Ito Bros.)
• Dole: “doubling drip tape is becoming increasingly
common in Central Coast” and “will help South Coats
grower with salts management”
• Manzanita Berry Farms: “ 4 tapes and reduced
sprinkler use” is a standard.
• Driscoll’s: Additional drip tapes and micro-sprinkler
used for grower demonstrations to save water and
minimize runoff (first time in summer strawberry)