5 ms·

Probably? But spraying water on leaves is not only the way water naturally gets to plants, it's often the only practical way to water crops at scale. Center-p

by mapt 2y ago

Probably? But spraying water on leaves is not only the way water naturally gets to plants, it's often the only practical way to water crops at scale. Center-pivot irrigation has dramatically increased the amount of and reliability of arable cropland, while being dramatically less sensitive to topography and preparation than flood irrigation. The advice to "water the soil, not the leaves" is founded in manual watering regimes in very small-scale gardening, often with crops bred to optimize for unnaturally prolific growth at the cost of susceptibility to fungal diseases, but which are still immature, exposing the soil. Or with transplanted bushes and trees where you have full access to the entire mulch bed. And it's absolutely a superior method, in those instances... but it's not like it's a hard-and-fast rule. We can extend the technique out to mid-size market gardens with modern drip-lines, at the cost of adding to the horrific amounts of plastic being constantly UV-weathered that we see in mid-size market gardens.

cbsmith 2y ago
Drip irrigation is kind of a thing out here in the desert...
- bboygravity 2y ago
  And then there is burried drip irrigation...
  - goeiedaggoeie 2y ago
    more tricky frequently because you need to measure the moisture for each plant as maintainance is difficult without, but this is generally the most efficient low cost method in very arid regions from what I have seen (dad is prof in the field, so exposure is years of unpaid labour as a child and student)
  - freedomben 2y ago
    Yes, but as GP said that doesn't scale. I live in an agriculture heavy community in the desert (mountain-west USA), and drip irrigation is only really used for small gardens and landscaping. Anyone with an acre or more of crops is not using drip. I certainly agree that drip is the ideal, and when you aren't doing drip you want to minimize the standing water on leaves, but if I were designing this project I would design for scale.
    - derefr 2y ago
      But drip irrigation doesn’t scale because you would need to lay + connect + pressurize + maintain hundreds of miles of hoses. It’s high-CapEx. A “watering robot”, meanwhile, can just do what a human gardener does to water a garden, “at scale.” Picture a carrot harvester-alike machine — something whose main body sits on a dirt track between narrow-packed row-groups, with a gantry over the row-group supported by narrow inter-row wheels. Except instead of picker arms above the rows, this machine would have hoses hanging down between each row (or hoses running down the gantry wheels, depending on placement) with little electronic valve-boxes on the ends of the hoses, and side-facing jet nozzles on the sides of the valve boxes. The hoses stay always-fully-pressurized (from a tank + compressor attached to the main body); the valves get triggered to open at a set rate and pulse-width, to feed the right amount of water directly to the soil. “But isn’t the ‘drip’ part of drip irrigation important?” Not really, no! (They just do it because constant passive input is lazy and predictable and lower-maintenance.) Actual rain is very bursty, so most plants (incl. crops) aren’t bothered at all by having their soil periodically drenched and then allowed to dry out again, getting almost bone dry before the next drenching. In fact, everything other than wetland crops like rice prefer this; and the dry-out cycles decrease the growth rates for things like parasitic fungi. As a bonus, the exact same platform could perform other functions at the same time. In fact, look at it the other way around: a “watering robot” is just an extension of existing precision weeding robots (i.e. the machines designed to reduce reliance on pesticides by precision-targeting pesticide, or clipping/picking weeds, or burning/layering weeds away, or etc.) Any robot that can “get in there” at ground level between rows to do that, can also be made to water the soil while it’s down there.
      - freedomben 2y ago
        Fair point, the robot could lower its nozzle to the ground and jet the water there, much like a human would, with probably not a lot of changes required. That does seem like it would be a good optimization.
        westurner 2y ago
        Isn't it better to mist plants, especially if you can't delay watering due to full sun? IIUC that's what big box gardening centers do; with fixed retractable hoses for misting and watering. A robot could make and refill clay irrigation Ollas with or without microsprinkler inlets and level sensing with backscatter RF, but do Ollas scale? Why have a moving part there at all? Could just modulate spec valves to high and low or better fixed height sprayers FWIU newer solar weeding robots - which minimize pesticide use by direct substitution and minimize herbicide by vigilant crop monitoring - have fixed arrays instead of moving part lasers An agricultural robot spec: Large wheels, light frame, can right itself when terrain topology is misestimated, Tensor operations per second (TOPS), Computer Vision (OpenCV, NeRF,), modular sensor and utility mounts, Open CAD model with material density for mass centroid and ground contact outer hull rollover estimation,
throwthrowuknow 2y ago
If you are concerned about plastic you could substitute terracotta half-round channel pipes and do a micro-canal / channel irrigation. More expensive than plastic irrigation pipes but worth it if you’re determined to avoid plastic. Wood would be a cheaper alternative but requires a lot more maintenance and replacement. We’re talking small scale agriculture with these robots anyways so either option is practical especially compared to the cost of the robot.
bal00ns 2y ago
You seem like you very much actually know what you’re talking about. Do you have any recommendations for books for laypeople for understanding modern agriculture?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by mapt 2y ago

cbsmith 2y ago

Drip irrigation is kind of a thing out here in the desert...

bboygravity 2y ago
And then there is burried drip irrigation...
- goeiedaggoeie 2y ago
  more tricky frequently because you need to measure the moisture for each plant as maintainance is difficult without, but this is generally the most efficient low cost method in very arid regions from what I have seen (dad is prof in the field, so exposure is years of unpaid labour as a child and student)
- freedomben 2y ago
  Yes, but as GP said that doesn't scale. I live in an agriculture heavy community in the desert (mountain-west USA), and drip irrigation is only really used for small gardens and landscaping. Anyone with an acre or more of crops is not using drip. I certainly agree that drip is the ideal, and when you aren't doing drip you want to minimize the standing water on leaves, but if I were designing this project I would design for scale.
  - derefr 2y ago
    But drip irrigation doesn’t scale because you would need to lay + connect + pressurize + maintain hundreds of miles of hoses. It’s high-CapEx. A “watering robot”, meanwhile, can just do what a human gardener does to water a garden, “at scale.” Picture a carrot harvester-alike machine — something whose main body sits on a dirt track between narrow-packed row-groups, with a gantry over the row-group supported by narrow inter-row wheels. Except instead of picker arms above the rows, this machine would have hoses hanging down between each row (or hoses running down the gantry wheels, depending on placement) with little electronic valve-boxes on the ends of the hoses, and side-facing jet nozzles on the sides of the valve boxes. The hoses stay always-fully-pressurized (from a tank + compressor attached to the main body); the valves get triggered to open at a set rate and pulse-width, to feed the right amount of water directly to the soil. “But isn’t the ‘drip’ part of drip irrigation important?” Not really, no! (They just do it because constant passive input is lazy and predictable and lower-maintenance.) Actual rain is very bursty, so most plants (incl. crops) aren’t bothered at all by having their soil periodically drenched and then allowed to dry out again, getting almost bone dry before the next drenching. In fact, everything other than wetland crops like rice prefer this; and the dry-out cycles decrease the growth rates for things like parasitic fungi. As a bonus, the exact same platform could perform other functions at the same time. In fact, look at it the other way around: a “watering robot” is just an extension of existing precision weeding robots (i.e. the machines designed to reduce reliance on pesticides by precision-targeting pesticide, or clipping/picking weeds, or burning/layering weeds away, or etc.) Any robot that can “get in there” at ground level between rows to do that, can also be made to water the soil while it’s down there.
    - freedomben 2y ago
      Fair point, the robot could lower its nozzle to the ground and jet the water there, much like a human would, with probably not a lot of changes required. That does seem like it would be a good optimization.
      - westurner 2y ago
        Isn't it better to mist plants, especially if you can't delay watering due to full sun? IIUC that's what big box gardening centers do; with fixed retractable hoses for misting and watering. A robot could make and refill clay irrigation Ollas with or without microsprinkler inlets and level sensing with backscatter RF, but do Ollas scale? Why have a moving part there at all? Could just modulate spec valves to high and low or better fixed height sprayers FWIU newer solar weeding robots - which minimize pesticide use by direct substitution and minimize herbicide by vigilant crop monitoring - have fixed arrays instead of moving part lasers An agricultural robot spec: Large wheels, light frame, can right itself when terrain topology is misestimated, Tensor operations per second (TOPS), Computer Vision (OpenCV, NeRF,), modular sensor and utility mounts, Open CAD model with material density for mass centroid and ground contact outer hull rollover estimation,

throwthrowuknow 2y ago

If you are concerned about plastic you could substitute terracotta half-round channel pipes and do a micro-canal / channel irrigation. More expensive than plastic irrigation pipes but worth it if you’re determined to avoid plastic. Wood would be a cheaper alternative but requires a lot more maintenance and replacement. We’re talking small scale agriculture with these robots anyways so either option is practical especially compared to the cost of the robot.

bal00ns 2y ago

You seem like you very much actually know what you’re talking about. Do you have any recommendations for books for laypeople for understanding modern agriculture?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]