Photo courtesy of Priva
Priva, a global supplier of climate and irrigation control systems, and Nelson Irrigation, an irrigation hardware firm, announced a partnership that the companies say gives growers a more connected and precise way to manage water and fertilizer.
The integrated solution is designed to tackle the real-world problems that cost growers time, money and crop performance every season.
The companies provided a production scenario: An irrigation strategy is carefully planned, schedules are set and then something goes wrong. A valve sticks or a zone gets too much water while another gets too little. Fertilizer is applied at the wrong moment when the plant cannot fully use it. By the time the problem shows up in the crop, the damage is done.
The Priva and Nelson partnership was formed to address this directly, the companies said. Priva's platform uses real-time data from sensors measuring plant water uptake, substrate conditions and climate to build irrigation strategies around actual crop demand. Nelson's wireless valve technology then carries those strategies into the field, controlling valves without the limitations of wired infrastructure and confirming that each valve opened and closed as intended.
The connection between the two systems means that growers have a complete, verifiable record of every irrigation event, according to the partnering companies. Growers can see what was planned, what was delivered and how the crop responded, they explained.