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WaterForce & Valley bring Variable Rate Irrigation (VRI) to NZ pivots

21 November 2010

Valley irrigation have released their new Variable Rate Irrigation (VRI) technology to the market.  After extensive testing this product is now available for installation on new and existing pivot irrigators. 

In New Zealand this technology has been used on pivots for the following:

  • stop irrigation over waterways (particularly important when effluent or fertiliser is involved),
  • keeping dairy cow races dry to reduce maintainance costs on races and minimize animal feet problems
  • allow mixed cropping farmers to alter the frequency of irrigation to individual crops under the same pivot. 

This new system utilises Valley's existing control panel technology meaning the cost to upgrade to Variable Rate Irrigation is now significantly reduced.  Further savings are made by utilising a control system that allows zone switching using power cables that already exist on the pivot irrigator.

The system can divide the field into 2 degree intervals with up to 30 zones across the length of the pivot irrigator. 

Cropmetrics, the company which provides the software to help WaterForce guide the grower to opitimising yeilds, has found a typical grower only varys water applications by 10-20% to optimise irrigation and crop growth.  The US market has also seen variable rate seeding and fertiliser applications to help improve productivity and profitability.  Precision agriculture is changing quickly, for more information on VRI for your pivot irrigator contact your local WaterForce branch today.

Click here to download a brochure on the WaterForce / Valley VRI brochure.