The Riego Berry mobile application: A powerful tool to improve on-farm irrigation performance in berry crops

Abstract

Berry crops have transformed the province of Huelva, in the Southwest Spain, transforming it into a prosperous area of Andalusia. Since the 1990 s, there has been a debate in this area about balancing agricultural production with environmental preservation, because 75% of berry production is in the vicinity of the Doñana National Park, a natural area of high ecological value designated as World Heritage by UNESCO. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of water use in the area. The advancement of mobile devices has allowed their wide use by technicians and farmers to schedule their irrigations. For this reason, the Riego Berry App has been developed as a smartphone application that allows to make irrigation schedules in a fast and intuitive way. This tool is the result of a more than ten-year public-private partnership. In this work, a comprehensive study has been made to validate the App, using data from trials conducted on commercial farm. The average irrigation water applied (IWA) by farmers ranged from 4292 (raspberry) to 8752 m3/ha (blueberry), whereas Riego Berry’s average IWA ranged from 3053 (raspberry) to 6177 m3/ha (blueberry). Water savings of 41% for strawberry and 29% for raspberry and blueberry have resulted from the use of this tool on commercial farms. Despite irrigation differences, there were no significant differences in yields between the farmer’s and Riego Berry treatments. Farm application efficiency increased by 63% for strawberry, 42% for raspberry, and 37% for blueberry, while irrigation water productivity increased by 36% for blueberry and raspberry, and 56% for strawberry.