Ridge cultivations using drip irrigation have been applied at several farms in recent years. The Type of dripline that is used for this application is a tough thick-walled dripline which is supplied on big reels containing 4500m of dripline. Unrolling these big reels is done with 3 reels at a time so we can cover 4,5m in one run making us able to cover up to 10 hectares of land per day.

The drippers in the dripline have a flow rate of 0,6 liter an hour with a dripper every 40cm making us able to have driplines up to 400m in length. By feeding the driplines from the center of the field we can supply irrigation fields up to 800m in length with water by using only one supply line. Three weeks after sowing the potatoes the driplines can be placed and put into operation. Recoiling the driplines can be done a few weeks before harvesting by positioning the recoiling machine at the head of a ridge. By standing here we can recoil driplines up to 400m in length making us able to remove driplines from up to 5 hectares a day.

This system can realised fully stand-alone by using solar dripirrigation.

From left to right you can see 3 samples of the same size of potatoes grown with a system made by Broere Irrigatie B.V.

1: Fertigation applied

2: Irrigation applied

3: Untreated potatoes, no irrigation, no fertigation

You can see a clear difference between the untreated potatoes and the irrigated potatoes. The number of irrigated potatoes is much higher than the untreated potatoes. You can also see that fergitation yields even more potatoes and more important, they are bigger than both irrigated and untreated potatoes.