Comparison of an Innovative Mobile Strip Irrigation System with Full-Area Sprinkler Watering

Irrigation plays an important role in agriculture in temperate regions because of the reduction in rainfall frequency during the spring and summer months along with the increase in average temperature and evapotranspiration. To increase irrigation efficiency, we developed an innovative mobile strip irrigation system for ridge culture. The objective of this pilot study was to compare the new technology with a standard full-area sprinkler system and analyze the yield, flow rate, applied irrigation on the ridges, and variability of the irrigation depths expressed by the Christiansen uniformity coefficient (CUC) and distribution uniformity coefficient (CUD). The experimental design applied the two treatments to carrots grown on eight ridges covering an area of 210 m². The experiment was conducted at the University of Kassel, Witzenhausen, Germany. The results showed a flow rate ranging from 54.7 to 72.7 l h^–1. Good CUC (89%) and excellent CUD (82%) were obtained for the mobile irrigation system, indicating low variability of irrigation depths. The water content in the ridge crest increased to field capacity after irrigation, with a moderate coefficient of variation (14%) among the measurements. In addition, water use reduction with respect to the standard irrigation system of 51% during the treatments, or 29% considering the entire experiment time, was observed, and no significant differences in the total fresh yield between the irrigation systems were verified. Because only a single sprinkler irrigation system with an irrigation efficiency of 80% was used, care must be taken when extrapolating the findings of the present study. High irrigation efficiency sprinkler irrigation systems with multiple sprinklers, which reduce the sprinkler irrigation amount, can be considered in future studies to confirm the increased water usage efficiency of the mobile strip irrigation system.