Technology Smart Approach to Keep Drip Irrigation Systems Functional

Abstract

Innovative technology that uses ultrasonic sound to clean drip pipes was developed to embrace the efficiencies offered by drip irrigation in order to preserve precious water resources and to get a return on the investment. The technology known as Greendrum technology uses only sound for cleaning and maintenance of drip irrigation pipes. It uses ultrasonic sound in a small body of water to effectively and quickly clean drip irrigation lines and pipes with ease. It is environmentally friendly and does not use any chemicals. Through testing by the Agricultural Research Council–Institute for Agricultural Engineering (ARC‐IAE), results were obtained and analysed that gave some insight into the performance of drip irrigation systems under field conditions and how effective the cleaning process of the Greendrum technology was. There was a tendency that the emission uniformity (EU) and coefficient of variation (CV) as measured in the field of all the dripper types, deteriorated over time. Greendrum dripline cleaning machine results showed that there was a 73% positive change in the CV of the dripper line from a bad CV of 10.6% to an excellent CV of 2.85%. As the drippers could not be cleaned in any other way, the Greendrum ultrasonic sound way was extremely effective and totally restored the drippers. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Water shortages, irrigation frequency, and preference for technologies and agricultural services: The case of Jordan*

“…Thus, improving efficiency in the face of increasing costs of irrigation is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for reducing pumping costs (and thus maintaining or even increasing farmers' profits). Much of the focus in the literature on on-farm water management has focused on improving irrigation efficiency through upgrading irrigation technologies, such as drip systems (Seo et al, 2008;Gerҫek, Demirkaya, & Isik, 2017;Reinders & Van Niekerk, 2018). Less attention has been paid to on-farm water application behaviours, despite evidence that farmers may apply water to their fields based on inaccurate information (Fernandez et al, 2020) or in an effort to reduce production risks (Hou et al, 2018).…”

“…The focus typically tends to be on improving irrigation efficiency: reducing the amount of water used on the farm to produce a given quantity of agricultural output (Evans & Sadler, 2008) and thus reducing groundwater abstraction. Thus increasing the adoption and use of improved irrigation technologies, especially drip systems, have been promoted to improve groundwater management in drought‐prone areas (Seo et al, 2008; Gerҫek, Demirkaya, & Isik, 2017; Reinders & Van Niekerk, 2018).…”

Prevention and treatment of drip emitter clogging: a review of various innovative methods

“…An innovative technology using ultrasound was applied by Reinders & Van Niekerk (2018) to clean the drip lines. It was named as Greendrum technology, which uses only sound to clean and maintain the drip lines.…”

Farmers' green technology adoption: Implications from government subsidies and information sharing

“…For example, green drip irrigation technology can not only increase production and profitability but also save valuable water resources and alleviate water shortages (Brar et al, 2021; Valentín et al, 2020). However, it is worth pondering that although green technology has many advantages, the adoption rate of green technology is still low (Reinders & Van Niekerk, 2018). Factors found in the literature that restricts the adoption of green technology include lack of awareness of new technologies (Takahashi et al, 2020), high initial costs (Ali et al, 2020) and government policy (Gerarden, 2023; Mukherjee, 2020).…”

“…Although the government has made efforts, the rate of green technology adoption is still unsatisfactory. For example, of the 1.6 million hectares of land in South Africa, only 160 000 hectares are irrigated with green drip irrigation technology (Reinders & Van Niekerk, 2018). In sizeable areas of Southern Europe, especially in Catalonia, Northern Italy, and Portugal, traditional irrigation techniques still dominate, with 51%, 70%, and 63% of farms using traditional irrigation techniques, respectively (Eurostat., 2016).…”