Drip Irrigation Protection for Pecan Grove, Israel
Country
Israel
Application
Protecting drip irrigation
Water source
Treated wastewater
Filtration solution
2 x 3" Mini Sigma
Background
The Hula Valley in Israel’s Upper Galilee Region is located on a major bird migration route, with 500 million birds passing through each year. In the 1950s, the valley was a malarial swamp which had to be drained to enable settlement and agriculture in the area. Today, the valley is home to a nature reserve and is filled with flora and fauna as well as many crops, orchards and fishponds, including pecan groves belonging to Kibbutz Sasa.
Challenge
The 140-dunam pecan grove was being irrigated by a system comprising of two manual 3” filters. The irrigation pipes were very old and pieces of cement from the crumbling pipes were constantly and severely clogging the filters. This resulted in frequent and costly maintenance and cleaning according to the grove manager, Yaron Raziel. At the beginning of the season, manual cleaning had to be carried out once a week. During the second half of the season, cleaning often had to be carried out on a daily basis. During peak season, the irrigation system works round the clock, which meant that Raziel often had to go to the grove whenever needed, 7 days a week — and sometimes entailed him leaving his home on the Kibbutz in the middle of the night to troubleshoot issues at the grove, some 35 km away. The constant need to travel to the grove at night, on holidays, and weekends placed additional demands on Raziel’s time. In order to clean the filters, irrigation had to be halted for at least half an hour while the filters were manually flushed before completing the irrigation cycle. The downtime during cleaning resulted in additional expenses.
Solution
Amiad installed two 3” Mini Sigma inline filters equipped with the ADI-P Controller, which had an immediate impact on Raziel’s workload. “Since switching to the Mini Sigma, I haven’t needed to make any special trips to the grove to clean the filters and I haven’t stopped irrigating once. The flow and pressure have maintained consistency throughout the season,” said Raziel. In addition, he remarked that he’s now able to irrigate additional areas in parallel which was not previously possible because of the old system’s pressure drops.
Results
Before replacing the manual filters with the Mini Sigma filters, he was only able to irrigate the pecan grove at a maximum of 100 m3/h. Today, after switching to the Mini Sigma, he can irrigate at 150 m3/h on the main line! In addition, while he had to previously irrigate at a pressure of 5 bar, 3 bar is now sufficient to reach every single dripper in the grove.
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