Telemetry: the new commitment to improve the production of blueberries in O'Higgins

02/01/2018

Nowadays blueberry producers face problems that often do not have a quick or direct solution and that cause a significant reduction in their production. Rainfall in full harvest, frost, port strikes, the appearance of pests (such as Lobesia botrana) and the restrictions imposed by the United States for exports have caused many farmers a headache.

Despite these difficulties, our country continues to be the first exporter of blueberries in Latin America. For this reason, a group of experts from the University of Chile, with the support of the Regional Government of O'Higgins, are developing the project "Transfer irrigation innovation and optimization in blueberries", which seeks to increase the efficiency of the use of water resources and energy to improve the production of this fruit.

Know when to water in real time

The experts leading this initiative are conducting field research in the provinces of Colchagua and Cardenal Caro, where they have installed telemetry capacitance probes to evaluate and study irrigation. "We have the goal of reducing the volume of water used in irrigation by an 25 percent, which will give farmers a competitive advantage because with that water they will be able to irrigate a larger plantation," says Helen Osorio, project professional.

"To achieve this, we have installed these modern sensors that will allow us to measure the water content in real time and thus know when and how much to irrigate without the need for producers to move from their desks," says the agronomist.

The electromagnetic probes will allow farmers to have complete irrigation control in their fields, since through telemetry they can see from their homes the state of water irrigation in the soil. The project also has the support of a group of professionals who are training producers for the efficient use of this tool.

Felipe Morales is an administrator who works in the field of one of the beneficiaries of this project and points out that: "This will help to have a lower energy expenditure and, at the same time, lower water costs because you are giving the Plant what you really need. The probe can identify when is the precise moment to be able to replenish the water to the plant. It helps us a lot since before we watered the eye no more, "he says.

Morales adds that this will also help the fertilization, since "the data also serve to see when the plant is absorbing water, therefore, one can know at what moment is assimilating the nutrients, in which sectors of the roots and where there is more absorption, "he says.

A participative and family production

This project not only seeks to work with the producer, but also to integrate the whole community through joint work together with educational establishments. In this sense the students of the agricultural school El Carmen de San Fernando, a school that has received irrigation courses, are being trained so that, tomorrow, they know how to use all the necessary technologies and once they leave school they have the knowledge to be able to face the challenges of today's agriculture.

Today the project is in its evaluation phase of irrigation trials in the field, where the professionals of the university are measuring all the necessary productive parameters to obtain results that allow to be a guide for the producers of the region, in order to maintain the place that Chile carries as one of the most important exporters of blueberries in the world.

This initiative is expected; financed by the Regional Government of O'Higgins through the Innovation Fund for Competitiveness; manage to improve the production of blueberries with a good agro-economic management, where irrigation, nutrition, pruning and phytosanitary aspects can make the difference to achieve a fruit of better quality and condition, which will allow better economic returns.

Source: elrancaguino.cl