Agri Kultuur January/ February 2015 | Page 18

% Saving 2007 Pumping hours 43116 2008 32709 24.1 2009 27676 35.8 2010 28820 33.2 2011 29800 32.7 Year 0 Table 1: Percentage saving in pumping hours tween Upington and Klein Pella. They also grow grapes for wine and raisins, citrus, dates, watermelons, sweat melons, maize, wheat, onions, potatoes and pomegranates on 732 ha and they also farm with deciduous fruits on 187 ha near Ceres in the Cape Province as well as nuts, corn, wheat and vegetable seeds on 1000 ha near Prieska in the Northern Cape. Keboes Fruit Farms comprises Raap en Skraap and five production units in Blouputs. On these farms, where the system was initially introduced, the water use as measured in pumping hours was reduced by 33,9% (see Table 1) on average during the four year period following 2007, when traditional scheduling methods were used. On the 560 ha of the Keboes Group of farms this amounts to a saving of 2 296 000 m3. During this period the measured sodium levels remained constant on Raap en Skraap, but increased on the Blouputs farms, indicating that irrigation will have to be increased to allow more leaching of the excess sodium. Even if an additional 10% leaching is used to get rid of the excess sodium, the saving would still be 27%. This precision irrigation scheduling approach has the following features:  The system is measuring and integrating all the major factors influencing the crop-soilatmosphere system, which make it applicable to all environments.  The Irricheck Irrigation Scheduling program is user friendly and automatically simulates the water use and irrigation requirement for the next 7 days. The system is backed by consult- ants who are trained by Irricheck. The consultants install the probes and the software, and do the setup of the irrigation blocks in the program. Conclusion It is imperative that an irrigation system must be used properly and that sound irrigation practices must be exercised to optimize yields. Precision irrigation with a system as Irricheck does provide the opportunity to accurately manage the irrigation water to improve water use efficiency.