Fertigation brings optimisation

Fertigation is the delivery of fertilizer through irrigation. Flowing from its precision drip irrigation capabilities, the precision irrigation solutions company, Netafim, has coined the term, Precision fertigation™.

Precision fertigation™ is the optimal root-zone management tool delivering just the right combination of water and nutrients directly to the roots of each plant, according to crop development cycles.

 Optimised control

Fertigation allows you to completely optimise your fertilization process and ensure that all fertilization is executed perfectly accurate. This, in turn, allows you to better control each plant to ensure optimal growth and minimal resource wastage.

The greatest advantage remains that fertilization can be ‘personalised’. Fertigation allows you to fertilize fields, or areas of the same field, where soil type and other factors differ, in a way that is perfectly adjusted to that field or zone. Furthermore, it allows you to only deliver the amount of fertilizer required by the plant at a specific life stage, never more and never less.

Fertigation limits fertilizer loss, as fertilizer leaching is eliminated. Fertilizer dosages can be kept small but regular and can be perfectly timed to rainfall patterns and other factors. It further allows you to adjust fertilizer applications according to any influencing factors that may pop up during the season. Be it market fluctuations, extremely low or high rainfall, poor crop growth, extreme weather events, or disease occurrence. Fertigation, if it is properly managed, can be implemented on most crops and in most areas.

The initial cost of implementing Fertigation may be high, but the reward outweighs the cost over and over. Firstly, it results in savings in fertilizer cost, labour costs, energy costs and more. Secondly, the increase in yield, as a result of optimised fertilization, has been substantial time after time in our experience.