PHOTO: N-DRIP PHOTO: N-DRIP
WATER MANAGEMENT ▶▶▶
N-Drip closes the gap between flood and drip irrigation
BY RENÉ GROENEVELD N
-Drip, an Israeli company, uses a 22- millimetre diameter irrigation system and also offers a solution for broada- cre farmers, with a 44-millimetre di-
ameter system. The system can reduce water and energy use by up to 70 percent, and the cost of installation can be kept low. “You can use N-Drip for 15 years until you reach the price of a standard drip irrigation system,” says Udi David Stern, general manager of N-Drip in Australia.
N-Drip was established in 2016 by Israeli pro- fessor Uri Shani and a group of investors. Drip irrigation has been around for almost sixty years, Mr David Stern points out. “And even though the standard drip system is efficient and provides higher yields, it still hasn’t broken through,” he says. “Only 3 to 4 percent of the world’s irrigators are using drip irrigation. There is a gap between the flood irrigators and the drip irrigators. So the question is: how do you make it possible for flood irrigators to use drip irrigation at a low cost? That, in a nutshell, is what N-Drip does.”
No high pressure David Stern explains that N-Drip closes the gap by eliminating the need for high pressures. N-Drip’s system operates at up to 0.87 psi/0.06 bar of water pressure, which eliminates the need for a costly pumping station. The system is also resilient to high levels of suspended parti- cles and needs no filtration. According to David Stern, the N-Drip system works well on large farms. “When you consider large-scale irriga- tion, like what you find in the fields of cotton farmers, grain farmers, potato farmers or sugar cane farmers here in Australia, you are easily looking at farms of 400 to 500 hectares,” he says.
The N-Drip technology uses a cylinder inside the pipe, around which the water flows. This keeps it close to the wall of the pipe and helps to maintain higher pressure. With N-Drip and
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N-Drip uses a cylinder inside the pipe around which the water flows. This keeps it close to the wall of the pipe and helps to maintain high pressure. The system is resilient to large levels of suspended particles and needs no filtration.
▶ FUTURE FARMING | 22 May 2020
N-Drip combines flood irrigation with the high yields and precision of conventional drip systems. Its technology makes use of existing field infrastructure without the need for the pumps and filters that are used in existing precision irrigation technologies.
approximately 70% of other drip irrigation sys- tems in use, the tapes or pipes need to be re- placed every year or after every harvest. The investment price of installing the infrastruc- ture of a standard drip system, with 1 to 2 bar of pressure, will cost farmers AU$ 10,000 to 14,000 per hectare, says Mr David Stern (US$ 6,500 to 9,000). “Those are the prices in Australia. And if you have 500 hectares, the to- tal price will be AU$ 5 million (US$ 3,2 million) at least. At N-Drip we use the existing infra- structure, so the cost will be a lot lower. If I go to a cotton farmer, who uses gravity to flood his fields, our system fits in like a glove.”
Level fields The idea of N-Drip is to give farmers who have been using flood irrigation a new option. “Our
prices will vary from one crop to another,” says Udi. “And it depends on how many rows and metres you use per hectare. But, on average, the annual investment in N-Drip is AU$ 600 to 900 per hectare (US$ 400 to 600). Plus an in- vestment in the initial set up of a regulating tank, manifolds and connections of AU$ 500 (US$ 320) per hectare.”
David Stern says that laser-level fields are all N-Drip needs to install its system on a farm. “We use the 50 centimetres that comes from ditches, from their channels, and otherwise we use a hydrant,” he says. “We regulate the level so it comes in from 50 centimetres of head pressure. Thanks to gravity and a constant low slope, we can get up to 90% or 92% of uni- formity.” This high uniformity is important to
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