"Autonomous night irrigation strategy is essential for optimizing crop health and water efficiency"

Source Irrigation Control now includes a night strategy, which allows growers to autonomously manage their water-giving strategy after sunset and during the night.

Since its launch, Source Irrigation Control has been transforming how growers manage irrigation. The advanced system offers autonomous irrigation management, adapting seamlessly to changing weather conditions and ensuring water is applied precisely when needed. With its predictive and scalable strategies, growers can rely on consistent irrigation tailored to their plants' specific requirements.

A key feature, dry-down control, leverages historical data and forecasted radiation to model water uptake, promoting healthy root development. Furthermore, through EC optimization, the system predicts nutrient needs and maintains an ideal balance of water and nutrients, fostering optimal root health.

Source Irrigation Control also simplifies scaling, allowing growers to efficiently manage more hectares while streamlining overall operations. With automated monitoring in place, greenhouse management has become more efficient, freeing up valuable time and eliminating the need for constant manual oversight.

The irrigation control interface

An autonomous night irrigation strategy is essential for optimizing crop health and water efficiency. By automating nighttime irrigation, growers can ensure that environmental conditions—such as temperature, humidity, and plant transpiration—are continuously monitored and adjusted. Nighttime irrigation becomes especially important during the winter months, when artificial lighting is used, as it creates a need for additional water to support plant health. This automation leads to a more responsive and efficient system, tailored to the specific demands of artificially lit environments.

At night, when artificial light is used to ensure that plants receive enough light in winter, Source Irrigation Control automatically adjusts moisture levels in real time, based on your set strategy, to ensure optimal water use. And so, growers don't have to rely on their own experience alone to manage irrigation, instead, they have a co-pilot in their greenhouse giving support and freeing their time to focus on other critical tasks.

While many growers understand the importance of nighttime irrigation, having an autonomous solution ensures consistent, precise control that maximizes water efficiency and crop health.

These are the four main ways in which an automated night strategy supports growers:

1. Reduced manual intervention: An autonomous strategy allows growers to trust that their irrigation is being managed without their constant oversight, providing peace of mind and more freedom to focus on managing other aspects of the operation.
2. Direct response: One key advantage of autonomous night irrigation is the ability to respond directly to the plant's real-time water uptake. Typically, growers pre-plan their night irrigation schedules, deciding in advance how much water to apply. However, with Source Irrigation Control, irrigation is only triggered when the system measures that the plant's water uptake has reached specific undersaturation levels. This ensures a more precise and responsive approach to watering.
3. Improved crop health: Tomatoes, in particular, benefit from a stable water supply, and automated nighttime management ensures that the pants are stressed during critical growing phases. The precise control provided by night irrigation prevents water stress, which can lead to diseases or reduced yields.
4. Reduced risks of excess undersaturation: By implementing a strategic automated irrigation plan at night, growers can avoid the risks of excess undersaturation, leading to poor nutrient absorption and hindering plant development. An accurate night irrigation strategy helps maintain the right level of moisture, reducing the risk of drought stress in the plant.

Adding nighttime irrigation management to the Source Irrigation Solution is a critical step in ensuring the health of crops like tomatoes. Nighttime irrigation helps achieve a balanced dry-down process and provides growers with key benefits such as improved water efficiency, better crop health, and greater peace of mind with less manual oversight.