Welcome to Trickle-L!
This mail list is devoted to the open and
unmoderated discussion of drip and trickle irrigation. Any topic
that is related to this method of irrigation is welcome. It is
hoped that this list can be used for the exchange of information
and ideas pertaining to drip and trickle irrigation. Anyone is
welcome to join this list.
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 94 23:36:48 EDT
Subject: Welcome from the list owner
WELCOME ALL MEMBERS!!
After only a few days of beginning this email list, we have an international
assortment of individuals all interested in trickle irrigation. To introduce
myself, I am a soil scientist working at the Water Management Research
Laboratory associated with the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S.D.A
in Fresno, California. For those not familiar to Fresno, it is in the middle
of California, the heart of the San Joaquin valley, where irrigated
agriculture is the dominate industry. For the past 16 years, our lab has done
research on various aspects of irrigation and drainage, yet the main emphasis
in the last 10 years has been on subsurface drip irrigation (sometime this is
known as SDI or SSDI or SSD). You pick which one you like.... it does'nt
matter to us. But, when one is talking about drip or trickle irrigation,
let's emphasize either surface or subsurface drip irrigation. Assuming the
popularity of subsurface drip irrigation, the majority of conversation on
this email list will be subsurface irrigation. However, it is not limited to
subsurface drip irrigation alone.
To get things started, I thought that it would be appropriate to initiate a
couple of general questions
for people to respond to: (It is not necessary to answer all questions).
1) Briefly, what is your affiliation with trickle irrigation?
2) What crops do you use drip irrigation on?
3) If using subsurface drip irrigation, what is the average depth of
placement of the drip line? Believe me, this is one of the biggest questions
for the industry, and there is debate among experts as to how deep one should
go. Three dimensional models are in their infancy. There is alot of work to
be done on this aspect.
4) What problems have you encountered with subsurface drip?
5) Fertigation is a real advantage of drip irrigation. What form of N, P and
K have you been trying and to what success?
6) Have you experienced a reduction in fertilizer and water use?
7) Do you have water quality problems? If so, how do you tackle the
situation?
8) How frequent do you irrigate? Many times a day or just one long session
per day or several days?
9) Do you have rodent damage? If so, how do you tackle the problem?
10) Are you pleased with the uniformity of your system or systems? Were they
designed correctly?
The above questions should be enough to get things going. I realize we have
alot of researchers online and these questions might seem elementary, yet we
all could be approaching problems from different angles. Also, as
researchers, we could benefit any farmer that could be taping into this
information system. Thus, they might be asking us some interesting questions
that we never thought of. So, once again, welcome and let the games begin!
Sincerely,
Richard M. Mead
Soil Scientist
USDA-ARS-WMRL
mead251@aol.com
rmead@arss.arsusda.gov