Choosing water-saving irrigation equipment for tea plants

Tea is a perennial industrial plant, which has a practical effect in greening barren land, bare hills, preventing erosion in steep areas. Currently, tea trees are not only a tree to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty for people in the midlands and mountainous areas but have actually helped many families become well-off...

Tea products are widely consumed in the domestic market and are an important agricultural export product of Vietnam. Developing tea production helps society solve jobs for farmers, especially in remote areas. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in recent years, Vietnamese tea has ranked 7th in output and 6th in export volume; exported to 107 markets on continents, including 18 traditional markets and 68 markets that are WTO members. According to the Vietnam Tea Association, by 2015, the whole country strives to reach 130,000 hectares of tea, with dry tea bud output reaching 260,000 tons. Currently, there are about 2 million workers in mountainous, midland, and remote areas who mainly live on tea.



Mobile sprinkler irrigation technology.

However, production costs are high, productivity is low, and the export value of Vietnamese tea products is only 60% of the average price in the world. The main reason is that the tea production process is mainly manual, especially the water supply for tea plants is completely dependent on rainwater.

In recent years, the National Agricultural Extension Center has coordinated with the Agricultural Extension Centers of Phu Tho, Yen Bai, Tuyen Quang, Thai Nguyen, Ha Giang provinces, etc. to build water-saving irrigation models for tea plants to disseminate new science and technology to farmers. The models have brought about the following results:

- Overcoming difficulties in irrigation technology for crops in hilly areas, where conventional surface irrigation methods cannot be applied.

- Proactively provide water to suit the needs of tea plants.

- Reduce labor costs compared to manual watering.

- Improve tea quality, increase the number of picking batches, increase tea yield, especially high-value winter tea.

Currently, there are many water-saving irrigation technologies on the market. In this article, I would like to introduce and analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each technology.

1. Fixed sprinkler irrigation technology

It is a solution to supply water in the form of raindrops through a water pipe system, the nozzle is installed permanently on the irrigation area.

The advantages of this method are: Ensuring proactive watering for crops; Can be applied to all terrains, including crops on steep hills.

However, this method requires complicated construction, excavation, installation of water pipes in the entire irrigation area, difficulty in applying mechanized plant care due to the pipeline system, difficulty in equipment maintenance, large investment capital, on average from 30-50 million VND/ha.

2. Mobile sprinkler irrigation technology

It is a solution to supply water in the form of raindrops through a water pipe system, the nozzle is arranged on a mobile machine, with remote control.

The advantages of this method are: Ensuring proactive irrigation for crops; Low investment capital, average from 10-15 million VND/ha; Simple construction, just need to arrange water pipes to the irrigation area; Can replace irrigation nozzles with pesticide nozzles to form a mobile pesticide spraying system, with remote control, the sprayer does not need to carry the tank, limiting the impact on health; Simple operation; Irrigation productivity reaches from 0.5-1 ha/hour; Mobile sprinkler irrigation equipment is also effective in watering and spraying pesticides for vegetables, industrial plants, including pepper.
Disadvantages: Suitable for irrigation terrain conditions with slopes below 15o.

Water always plays an important role in the development of crops. Based on terrain conditions, crop types, and water sources, farmers need to choose technological solutions that are suitable for their investment capacity, ensuring water supply that meets crop needs, improving productivity and tea quality, reducing costs, lowering prices, and improving economic efficiency in agricultural production.

According to the National Agricultural Extension Center - LY