Automatic irrigation system

When you hear “automatic irrigation system,” you immediately imagine a panel with a bunch of buttons and perfectly watered beds. In fact, it often turns out that the farmer bought an expensive installation, and it pours water on schedule even in the rain. This is where the main catch lies - automation should not be a stupid execution of a program, it must take into account real conditions.

Why the simplest automation fails in the field

I remember in 2019 they installed a timer-controlled system in tomato fields in the Krasnodar Territory. It would seem that everything is simple: I set the intervals and forgot. But a month later we saw that in the heat the plants lack moisture, and in cloudy weather the water literally floods the roots. We had to urgently modify it - add soil moisture sensors.

It was then that the experience of colleagues from Shandong Linyao Intelligent Agriculture Technology LLC came in handy. They have long moved away from primitive automation, focusing onintegration of water and fertilizers. Their engineers once explained: the system must not just pour water, but understand when and with what additives to do this.

By the way, their website https://www.lyzhihuinongye.ru is not just a business card. There are real cases on setting up equipment, right down to sensor connection diagrams. For practitioners, this is more valuable than a dozen advertising brochures.

How to get the most out of drip irrigation

Drip systems are a completely different story. Many people think that it is enough to lay out the tapes and the job is done. In fact, if you do not take into account the pressure in the line, the first plants receive a stream of water, and the last ones receive miserable drops.

This is where frequency automatic equipment shows itself in all its glory. Last season we tested a system with frequency converters - the difference in irrigation uniformity was almost 40% compared with standard solutions.

This is especially important for slope areas. Without adjusting the pressure, the lower sections simply drown in water, while the upper sections remain dry. Moreover, the problem is not always solved by zoning - sometimes it is necessary to dynamically change parameters during one irrigation cycle.

Filtration is the element that everyone remembers after the fact.

Nothing kills an automated irrigation system like poor water treatment. I have seen cases where expensive drippers failed during the season due to sand and algae.

Water filtration equipment is not just a 'box with a mesh'. Depending on the source (well, river, reservoir), completely different solutions are needed. For hard water, sometimes it is necessary to install entire treatment stations with softeners.

The previously mentioned company always includes multi-stage filtration in its projects of smart agricultural parks. And this is not reinsurance - in fact, such a system pays for itself in the safety of all equipment.

Remote control is not for show

Modern systems allow you to control valves from your phone, but many farmers are afraid of this like hell. Like, it’s broken - how can I fix it now? But in practice, remote control of valves does not provide comfort, but real savings.

Imagine: you see according to the forecast that it will start raining in an hour. You take out your phone and put off watering - saving water and electricity. Or the pressure in the system drops sharply at night - you receive a signal and can react quickly.

In high-quality agricultural fields, it is generally difficult to do without such an approach. Especially when it comes to large areas, running across fields with a key to switch valves is simply unrealistic.

Design is something you can’t skimp on

The most painful experience is when you try to save money on the design of hydraulic structures. It seems that you can take a standard project and adapt it. In fact, each site is unique: somewhere there is close groundwater, somewhere there is a specific topography, somewhere the composition of the soil requires a special approach.

Design and construction is more than just paperwork. This includes calculating pipe diameters, selecting pumping equipment, and planning slopes. A mistake at this stage can result in the entire system working at half capacity.

By the way, at Shandong Linyao Intelligent Agriculture Technology LLC, designers always first go to the site, take a topographic survey, and analyze the soil. Only after this they begin to work on the project. Maybe that's why their systems work more stable.

Integration is what distinguishes professional solutions

A modern automatic irrigation system is not just disparate equipment. This is a complex where humidity sensors, a weather station, controllers and actuators work as a single organism.

Intelligent equipment for integrating water and fertilizers is already a standard for serious farms. The system does not just water, but doses nutrients depending on the phase of plant development.

I saw how in experimental fields such a system automatically increased the share of potassium fertilizers during the flowering period of tomatoes, and phosphorus fertilizers when fruits were filling. The result is that with the same consumption of water and fertilizers, the yield increased by 15%.

Prospects - where the industry is heading

Now many people are talking about AI and big data in agriculture. But in practice, simple and reliable solutions are still in greatest demand. Not a complex system that requires constant intervention from programmers, but one that works stably for years.

The automatic irrigation system of the future is not necessarily something super complex. Rather, it is a well-designed system with properly selected equipment and thoughtful control logic.

If we evaluate trends, hybrid solutions look the most promising - when basic functions work autonomously, and fine-tuning and monitoring are available remotely. This is exactly the approach that is implemented in modern smart agricultural parks.