00:00 Hay
bales in a field
Focus
pull – water pipe to plants
MS
– water fertigation equipment
Wide
– equipment in field
Wide
– Dr Monaghan walks to equipment
MS
– fertigation equipment on ground
Wide
– greenhouses
CU
– Warwick HRI sign
MS
– researcher in field adjusting equipment
CU
– of above
Guide Voice: As record heat waves and water
shortages continue, most food growers can only dream of a water and
fertilizer saving system that could dial up over a GSM phone
network, respond to commercial five day weather reports, and decide
whether to turn itself on or not!
However, it’s now a reality, researchers at the
University of Warwick's plant research arm, Warwick HRI have
developed this “Dynamic Fertigation” technology in
response to growing water scarcity particularly in the
UK.
00:29 SOT Dr Jim Monaghan, Project
Leader, Warwick HRI / Harper–Adams University College
-“Fertigation allows crops to receive water and
fertiliser in small amounts little and often when and where the
plant needs it. Why its going to become more important in the
future is the fact that we’re becoming very aware of the
environment, there’s a lot of legislation that’s
limiting waste of water and limiting the pollution of water courses
by fertilisers for example.”
00:51 CU
– low shot across crops in field
Wide-
across crops in
field
CU
– low shot, equipment and crops
CU
– as above
Wide
– Dr Monaghan walks through crops
MS
– as above
CU
– Dr Monaghan examining plant
Wide
– crops in field
CU
– low shot of crops and equipment
CU
– solar power controller
Wide
– equipment in field
CU
– circuit board
MS
– solar power unit and circuit board in casings
Guide Voice: By examining water and fertilizer
saving irrigation techniques widely used in Southern Europe, which
use trickle tape irrigation to provide the mixed delivery of both,
known as “fertigation”, they found a number of ways to
improve on them.
In Europe, fertigation pipes are most likely to be controlled by
someone riding a moped through the fields to turn supplies on and
off by hand. At Warwick HRI however, they’ve built a system
that uses sensors at the base of plants to detect the level of
moisture in the soil and feed that back to a computer, using a GSM
phone link direct from the field, to a control system that switches
it on when the soil dries to a set level, unless the weather
forecast is for rain.
01:29 SOT Dr Jim Monaghan –
“We’ve tried to integrate it in a system that can
predict crop nutrient requirements but measure soil water
quantities and at the same time integrate weather forecast data
because we don’t want to be applying precious fertiliser, we
don’t want to be putting effort into applying fertiliser and
20 minutes later we receive 10 millimetres of rainfall which will
just flush everything through the soil profile and off into water
courses.”
01:56 CU
data logger irrigation monitor unit
MS
– crops
CU
– cabling going into the ground
MS
– fertigation unit
CU
– label for crop
Wide
– Dr Monaghan using laptop at equipment
CU
– cabling and crops
CU
– as above, different angle
Wide
– crops in field
MS
– Dr Monaghan walks to equipment
ECU
– Dr Monaghan checks reading on gauge
MS
– Dr Monaghan leaves equipment
CU
– low shot, crops/plants
CU
- plants
Guide Voice: By combining the soil moisture
data with advance weather reports, they’ve now automated the
system to the extent that it could make its own decisions on
whether the crops needed watering.
Currently they are running a number of field trials of
“Dynamic Fertigation,” including a field of lettuce in
Cartagena, Spain, which they can monitor and adjust from an office
in Warwickshire in the UK.
Early results show 33% saving in fertilizer for lettuce and
50% for runner beans, sound commercial drivers for further
development of this prototype system, which will be of interest
around the world for a number of reasons.
Not only does it save precious water, stop fertilizer from being
washed away, with the added ecological benefit of stopping it
polluting waterways, but by fine-tuning the process, it could also
result in better quality produce for the consumer.
02:44 SOT Dr Jim Mognahan
– “We can actually run plants more accurately and
we can run them dryer and we can run them with lower nutrients and
that gives you a longer shelf life. So a customer can go and pick
it off the shelf and that lettuce will be able to be eaten a day or
two longer than it would if it had been in a traditional
system.”
03:00 CU
– produce
Wide
– Dr Monaghan at equipment
Wide
– equipment in field
CU
– upwards angle shot of plant
Guide Voice: Better produce, with more
efficient use of water and fertilizer, less pollution, short of
ringing up to say when the produce is ready for you to eat it,
there seems little this system can’t do!
03:11
Ends
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