On March 31st, the R&D director of Udapa Ana Carrasco and Jon Legorburu, the cooperative’s agricultural technical engineer, participated in the webinar “Innovating in potato irrigation using precision tools”, where the results obtained were analyzed in the UREZPAPA project.
Representatives of the UAGA union and the Neiker technology center were also present at the event , who collaborate with the project from the outset, as well as the Garlan cooperative .
he main objective of this project is to achieve greater efficiency in water management to achieve the greatest possible saving of this resource, without reducing the crop yield. “Water is the biggest determining factor in potato production, so it is very important to manage irrigation well, providing the crop with the water it needs, when it needs it. In other words, by providing more water than necessary we would be wasting it, while if we waste less we would lose production ”, explains Carrasco. For this reason, through UREZPAPA the incorporation of precision digital and sensorial tools in the management of irrigation in potato cultivation has been studied.
For this, during the last production campaign, two pilot tests were carried out to compare the use of humidity probes with the irrigation management application URA. The tests were carried out in the plots of two Udapa partners, located in the municipalities of Elburgo and Foronda (Álava). At the Elburgo farm, the irrigation recommendations given by the humidity probes were compared with those of the URA application. To do this, the farm was divided into two areas, irrigating each part as recommended by each tool.
After the analysis, it was found that the URA application reflects the water deficit in a similar way to the humidity probes, the water contribution recommended by the two applications was very similar in both areas, and in terms of production, no differences were found either. significant between both cases. In the Foronda farm, on the contrary, an irrigation simulation was carried out based on intervals of between 4 and 10 days, in order to determine the best irrigation frequency.
The data of the study have reflected that the average loss of production with respect to the optimal irrigation can reach up to 24.6% in case of irrigations every 10 days and at fixed doses of 32mm, while irrigating every 6-8 days and up to field, it can be a significant improvement to minimize production losses due to irrigation adjustment. In short, the two results obtained through the two tools used to manage irrigation show that the technologies are very useful to optimize water use and production in potato cultivation.
Udapa
Udapa is a cooperative owned by agricultural producers, business managers and workers, who enthusiastically share a common project. We established Udapa in 1993 with the intention of innovating, improving and professionalizing the processes of production, handling and marketing of fresh potatoes, and today we continue with the same purpose and enthusiasm.
The presence of producers in this project allows us to be in direct contact with the product at source to achieve the most ambitious standards of quality, specialization and diversification. Due to our cooperative nature, we have fully integrated into our reason for being the commitment to the economic and social development of our environment.
A unique cooperative project is born. Thanks to the union of Propaco (cooperative of agricultural producers), Proagral (associated work cooperative) and Laboral Kutxa (credit cooperative), Udapa is born, a cooperative project that aims to improve, innovate and professionalize production processes and marketing of fresh potatoes…
New facilities in Zuazobidea. At the beginning of September the new facilities for receiving, calibrating and preserving potatoes are inaugurated. This 14,000m 2 plant, which is equipped with 4.0 technology, has a cooling capacity to conserve more than 15,000 tons of potatoes, eliminating post-harvest treatments, and its main objective is to boost production in the environment.
