Abstract

Irrigation management in fruit growing is one of the main agricultural tasks that producers must carry out on their farms. Despite the theoretical existence of a number of alternatives for irrigation control, they are not necessarily efficient in clearly determining the time and frequency of irrigation during the season. For this reason, the UchileCrea team from the University of Chile has worked for more than 20 years to define and validate a technological package (PT) for irrigation control, framed in the integration of new technologies (capacitance probes, IoT, management of precision, NDVI, etc.) and a recurrent increase in the country's water shortage, as a result of climate change, forcing to increase the water use efficiency of irrigation (EUAr). According to the international methodology established for the generation of technological packages, 4 stages were defined that had to be fulfilled: Stage 1, selection of technologies and creation of sub-packages. Stage 2, proposal for a technological package. Stage 3, validation and feedback. Stage 4, promotion and adoption of the PT. It was possible to verify that it is possible to define the time and frequency of irrigation in an optimal way, ensuring maintenance or improving yields, saving between 20 to 40% of the water used, increasing the EUAr and decreasing the electrical energy consumption. Additionally, this PT allows to have a proven program to face the water scarcity that the country is experiencing and through permanent promotion, it has been incorporated into the national fruit system.