The Institut de Recerca i Tecnologia Agroalimentàries (IRTA) has developed a tool to help irrigators plan crops by managing water as efficiently as possible.
Called ‘Irriland’, the simulator identifies in real time how much water is available and how much the crop needs and uses satellite images and artificial intelligence to create different scenarios on how to use water more efficiently to achieve a certain production.
The objective is to help irrigation communities in decision making. In fact, the Urgell canal has already taken this tool into account in the design of its new computer system to distribute water equitably in the next campaign.
Depending on the water available at any given time, the Irriland tool proposes different solutions. “The advantage is that we can simulate many scenarios and, therefore, we give the results of these scenarios to the water managers who in the end are the ones who must make the decisions,” explained the IRTA delegate to Terres de l’Ebre. and Lleida and researcher of the efficient water use program, Joan Girona.
This data management tool was tested last summer in pilot tests on farms in the Girona regions and in the Urgell and Segarra-Garrigues canals. This year, IRTA plans to expand it to other parts of the country “in a more efficient and already automated way”, explained the general director of IRTA, Josep Usall.
For its part, Girona has highlighted that in a context of climate change, in which droughts will be more “cyclical, frequent and intense”, the simulator is not only useful for managing the current drought, but for “managing the future of a resource that is increasingly scarce but necessary to ensure food production”.
Irriland is one of the proposals against drought that IRTA has presented to the main agents of the territory within the framework of the 5th IRTA Institutional Round Table in the Lands of Lleida and the Pyrenees, which was held at the entity’s headquarters on the Agronomists campus. from the University of Lleida.
The meeting was attended by leaders from the Provincial Council of Lleida, the Generalitat, the Chamber of Commerce, Fira de Lleida and several mayors of the district.
With this meeting, IRTA wants to bring its research closer to the territory and learn first-hand about its needs in terms of research and innovation in the agri-food field.
