Valley VRI Activities

Valley Irrigation has defined a team dedicated to the Variable Rate Irrigation products. This team focuses on several avenues: setting up VRI project fields, uploading prescriptions, making sure that growers and Valley Dealers are on the same page, visiting fields with Zone Control, making sure everything is running, and performing validation tests, among other tasks.

Each week, we will blog about the VRI team’s efforts and their current activities.

Start-up continues for both VRI Speed Control and VRI Zone Control. Past weeks' activities by the VRI team have focused on:

VRI Zone Control validation test

• Validation of performance on VRI Zone Control
• Tests use a grid of cans set in an arc to measure the application depths as the pivot zone passes over the cans
• VRI Zone prescription is written to change the percent depth
  
• Start-up of a Valley corner with VRI Zone Control for off/on control as the center pivot and corner pass over a ditch
  
• Meetings with Valley Dealers to answer questions
  
• Meeting with a USDA-ARS research group on their findings and experience with VRI
  
• Meetings with Valley Dealers and customers considering VRI
• One grower has four crops under the same pivot and is looking for an easier way to change application depths; right now, he reprograms the control panel all of the time

Center pivot moving into rice crop

In the picture on the right, you can see the center pivot moving out of the soybeans into the rice crop.  After some discussion, the grower thinks the Valley VRI Speed Control is what he needs.