Evaluating The Design Of Your Pivot Package

By: Potato Grower

As we progress through harvest, many of us are also evaluating the performance of the sprinkler packages on our center pivot irrigation systems over the course of the growing season. Checking for wear or failures in the devices, checking pressures and flows against the original package design and evaluating pumping plant performance are all essential for maintaining efficient irrigation. But what about evaluating the design of the center pivot sprinkler package itself? There are many ways the design of the package might not be optimal for your particular field or cropping system.

One major example that we see on a regular basis is that of “streaking” in the field. The overlap of the sprinkler-wetted pattern is key to a uniform application. Streaking occurs when that overlap is insufficient, creating dry “rings” in the crop. With the rise in popularity of drones for checking fields during the growing season, we are seeing more and more images like the following showing up; and, if caught soon enough, the issue may be remedied in time to mitigate yield losses.

You can see that the field pictured above is filled with concentric rings where either the pivot irrigation system sprinklers were spaced too far apart to begin with, or there is too much tall crop interfering with the overlap of the sprinklers. This can lead to a significant percentage of loss in yield, especially in small fields such as this. But even on larger systems where spacing has been designed to be wide in the first few spans, you still may see streaking on up to or more than half of the center pivot.