The main challenge facing fruit farming is to continue to provide quality and safe products in the face of decreasing water availability to meet crop needs.
Due to climate change and competition with other economic sectors, water resources available for agriculture are expected to become scarcer and more expensive in the coming years.
To cope with this situation, in addition to further modernisation of irrigation, it is increasingly important to increase the efficiency of water use on plots. Localised irrigation is the most efficient irrigation system, however, it is a technology that is currently not fully adapted to the needs and peculiarities of woody crops, given that their water needs increase as the vegetative development of the tree increases.
Within this framework, AZUD’s main objective in the RIEGOTEL project is the development of new emitter management systems, allowing the controlled release of water depending on the crop’s water demand.
This solution favours the reduction of energy costs in irrigation, thus contributing to guaranteeing the economic sustainability of the sector.
At the same time, new agronomic designs for drip irrigation are being defined in order to determine the volume of wet soil necessary to optimise the water status of the plantation, without increasing the evaporative component, thus improving the efficiency of water use and meeting the challenge of food safety and quality.
The RIEGOTEL project (RTC-2016-4972-2) has received support from the expenditure budget of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Competitiveness (MINECO) and has been co-funded by the European Union in the framework of the Challenges-Collaboration call of the State Programme for Research, Development and Innovation Oriented to the Challenges of Society, within the framework of the State Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation 2013-2016.
Together with AZUD, they participate in the RIEGOTEL project:
