Timing Is Everything
18 December 2008 
With fertigation and chemigation, timing is everything. For example, onion farmers are all too familiar with one of their worst enemies, a tiny insect known as the onion thrip. While the pests are hardly visible to the naked eye, their damage certainly is; the leaves of the crop wither and become a silver-gray color, and render the plant vulnerable to several different strains of bacteria and fungi.
In controlling thrips, timing of insecticides is vitally important, and chemigation — the precise application of insecticide through a center-pivot irrigation system — makes it possible.
“We have to spray for onion thrip as frequently as every five to seven days,” says Ryan “Hoss” Froman, an onion farmer in the US state of Colorado. “You have to be able to get in there right away.”
Precision In Practice
Prior to chemigation, insecticides were applied either through a spray rig or from a hired airplane. A ground rig has trouble if the ground is wet, and at times the crops are continuously irrigated. With a plane, the farmer is at the mercy of the servicing company’s schedule, and if there is enough wind, insecticide cannot be sprayed for risk of drift.
Timing plays a crucial role in fertilization as well. “You have to fertilize onions before they start bulbing really hard,” says Froman. “It’s a lot easier to get it applied through the pivot, using fertigation, than any other way.”
Fertigation through the center pivot has also allowed Froman to reduce his input costs by 30%. He fertigates once per week and supplies the needed nutrients for that week without wasting fertilizer through broadcasting. Froman utilizes chemigation and fertigation products from Agri-Inject, Inc., Yuma, Colorado, US, including three of the company’s chemigator units, a Mister-Mist’r injection check valve, and the Micro-Tube fertigation system. The units are dual-pump — one side for fertigation and the other for chemigation.
In addition to getting fertilizer and chemicals applied precisely and on time, Froman has saved in the area of labor.
Chemigation and fertigation are beginning to experience strong growth in several parts of the world, particularly among high-value fruit and vegetable growers in Asia and South America, where modern fertigation and chemigation systems are finding large followings, and adoption is expected to continue to expand.
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