Wine Grape growers in California are saving water and drastically reduce labor costs by using a new, non-toxic irrigation cleaning treatment. These vineyards are using a ‘bio-catalyst’ called Phyto-Cat, which accelerates gas transfer on a microscopic level to catalyze an immediate decomposition of organic material in water.
In 2014 the Bio-Organic Catalyst company of Costa Mesa California was conducting experiments on how their proprietary catalytic chemistry could benefit the soil biome and the health of root systems. “So far the evidence of benefit to the crops is strong but it may take several years to establish the science conclusively” Says David Prum of the Water Lever Company, a distributor of Phyto-Cat. “But one thing was immediately obvious; every emitter that had Phyto-Cat ran perfectly clean”.
Chalone Vineyards in Soledad California, was the first commercial farm in the state to use Phyto-Cat. Farm manager Richard Boer reported immediate and dramatic results, “We put in a quart per acre, injected it into the irrigation system, we let it sit overnight and then we flushed as we would traditionally. We got more gunk out of the lines than we ever had in the past. We started the system this year and the lines are clean.” in June of 2017 Richard Boer opened one of his drip ends and clear water erupted from the line. “Every drip end that i’ve opened this year has been clean and we haven’t cleaned out the system since last year at shutdown.”
Since the invention of modern drip irrigation in Israel during the 1960s, a wide variety of emitters and filtration systems have been created to address the principal challenge of micro-irrigation: the clogging of the system with organic and mineral materials. But over time biological activity inside the system can accumulate minerals from the water and create scaling which can plug even the best designed irrigation systems.
On a farm with mineral rich water, scaling can impose significant costs. At Sebastiani vineyards of Sonoma California, farm manager Mark Seifert began using Phyto-Cat in the spring of 2017, “When we flush our irrigation system... Our guy has to go through and undo all the ends of the drip lines” he said. “You got dozens of acres of vines on one ranch and hundreds of irrigation lines that need to be undone. That’s a lot hours our guys could be doing more productive things in the vineyard.” During the 2017 irrigation season Mark Seifert didn’t have to flush his irrigation system once.
Richard Boer’s irrigation automatically flushes when the pressure differential between the incoming and outgoing water reaches a predetermined limit, indicating the system has material in it. A few months into the growing season the pressure differential was next to zero. Richard Boer explained, “It costs us about 700 dollars an acre foot of water to pump it from the valley floor to the property before we even put it in the reservoir and irrigate with it and each times the filters flush they flush probably 2000 gallons worth of water, so if we can save water we’re saving money“. Boer estimates that a $70 per acre treatment of Phyto-Cat saves $300 per acre in labor, parts and water costs.
But it might be that what farmers most appreciate about Phyto-Cat is how safe it is to work with. Until 2017 Tarcisio “Taucho” Carona of Sonoma County, California had to use a peroxide treatment to deal with the Iron Chelate Bacteria in his water supply. Kneeling down beside one of his clean drip ends, Taucho collected some of the water in his hand and smelled it. “When I used the peroxide you can not touch the water like this, otherwise you burn your skin fast. But with Phyto-Cat you can do that.”
said Taucho, “I’m surprised because we had 3 years with the peroxide and I never saw the difference in the water, only on my hands because that chemical burns the skin”.
Drip Irrigation is a powerful agricultural technology that can reduce agricultural water consumption by 30 to 60 percent and increase crop yields by 20 to 50 percent. By increasing the efficiency of drip irrigation and expanding its use, agriculture can be made more profitable and environmentally sustainable. In places like California where water resources are precarious, optimizing micro-irrigation systems is a social and environmental imperative as well as a financial one. Treating irrigation water with safe formulations like Phyto-Cat may be the key to perfecting micro-irrigation technology.