The extremely hot weather this summer has served as yet another dramatic wake-up call, if one was needed, that man made climate change is real and is starting to affect our everyday lives, not just far away in the polar regions but right here at home! Summers becoming hotter and drier is a reality that growers are having to face, with the impact this has on irrigation requirements and water use. For fruit growers, decisions about provision of water resources and how irrigation water is best managed and conserved form a vital part of business planning and development in many parts of the country. More growers are building reservoirs, as well as deploying other strategies to conserve irrigation water and manage it’s use as efficiently as possible.
As if this wasn’t a difficult enough situation, the recent spiralling costs of fertilisers has also sharpened the thinking of growers using fertigation, as saving water will also save on fertiliser costs.
Under potentially stress-inducing conditions over the summer months, #growers need all the right tools to help them manage their irrigation and get the best coverage from every drop of water they apply. Use of surfactant wetting agents is widely recognised as a cost-efficient way of ensuring water and nutrients are spread evenly throughout growing media. Wetting agents allow the media to absorb water more readily and improve even distribution throughout the media. The word ‘surfactant’ is actually an abbreviation of ‘surface active agent’, so called because they act to change the properties of growing media particles and the interface between the growing media and the irrigation water. Surfactants lower the surface tension of water and form a ‘bridge’ between the water and growing media, preventing dry spots and aiding quick absorption, which will reduce waste from excess run-off and allow the full volume of growing media to be utilised by the crop.
However, standard wetting agents are synthetic chemicals produced from the oil industry, so not sustainable or environmentally friendly products at all. In fact, the co-polymer surfactant chemicals used in standard wetting agents are actually classed as a form of plastic! In the same way as soft fruit growers have moved away from peat in growing media, a more #sustainable and high-quality alternative surfactant is now available.
#Hortifeeds are delighted to introduce their new wetting agent HortiHydrate Bio, which has been formulated by leading experts from a unique blend of sustainable ingredients. It boasts equivalent performance to standard synthetic #surfactants but is also environmentally friendly, representing a vast improvement over products that are currently available. In #trials, HortiHydrate Bio was shown to increase root extension and branching, by providing the ideal moisture balance throughout the root zone. Irrigation penetration time through growing media was improved by over 7 times compared with water alone, and 5 times greater than other #organic alternatives.
HortiHydrate Bio has also been approved for use in organic growing systems by The Soil Association.
- by Hortifeeds Agronomist Mike Wainwright
For further information, contact Hortifeeds here: www.hortifeeds.co.uk
or join us at Four Oaks Trade Show, on 6 & September, stand C78-80. Register here: https://online.fouroaks-tradeshow.com/shop/four-oaks-trade-show-2022-visitor/
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