Frequent questions (FAQ) / What are the advantage of the sprinkling irrigation over the gravity irrigation?
What are the advantage of the sprinkling irrigation over the gravity irrigation?
The main advantages of sprinkling irrigation are the following:
-Lower water consumption. -In gravity irrigation, we can not apply the adequate water quantity, as we can do in sprinkling irrigation, so irrigation cycles are more separated, provoking hydric stress and the flooding of plants. -It does not require soil movements, so the arable layer maintenance remains intact. The most frequent is to have a weathering soil of around 15-25 cm that it is convenient not to bury. If the surface is not perfectly levelled, with slopes between 2 and 4/1.000, irrigation does not work. Each centimeter of average that needs to be moved to level the surface represents a movement of 100 m3/Ha. Every 4-5 years we need to level the surface.
-Not all soils can be irrigated by gravity:
Soils with low hydraulic conductivity: Important losses due to surface runoff and land pulling. Soils with high hydraulic conductivity: Deep percolation.
-If there are not good drainage systems installed, we run the risk of field salinization, whereas we can use sprinkling irrigation even to desalinize soils. -Many problems to irrigate during the night, whereas in sprinkling irrigation it is not only a problem but also it entails many advantages (power savings, as we can use lower costs of Kw. during the night). -Normal operations to form terraces that are generally required entail removals and terraces of more than 30 cms (difference in heigth between terraces of more than 60 cms), they always entail the loss of arable layer that is necessary to regenerate with many labours and fertilizers. The great quantity of furrows, ditches and channels that need to be built entails the loss of surface of around 5 and 10%.
-Sprinkling irrigation has a great facility to adapt water delivery to the characteristics of the surface, both in each plant and in each hypsometry, specially in this last case. Watercourses are not an obstacle and even the system can work better if it is well projected over surfaces slightly moved. We can use the fertirrigation equipment with a slight increase in the cost, something that we can not do in gravity systems.
-The kind of soil, that sometimes shows difficult exigences to satisfy with gravity irrigation, shows here a nearly perfect way to maintain its humidity degree in the correct limits. In fact, sandy soils do not bear big terraces, as water losses provoked since water goes inside them till it reaches the other end are very important. Clayey soils are also difficult to manage due to floodings and superficial surface runoff that appear. Sprinkling irrigation systems avoid all these inconveniences and we can state that there is not any surface that can not be irrigated through sprinkling irrigation.
-The considerable saving in manpower. A coverage solid set installation fairly automated can be controlled by one person in hundreds of Has.
-Another important advantage is its installation speed, specially movable equipments that allow us to execute irrigation transformations in short time.
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