Validatio of an Aanalytacl  Model to lower the cost of solar-powered drip irrigation systems for smallholder farmers in the MENA region

Fiona Grant, Carolyn Sheline, Susan Amrose, Elizabeth Brownell, Vinay Nangia, Samer Talozi, Amos. Winter. (19/5/2020). Validatio of an Aanalytacl Model to lower the cost of solar-powered drip irrigation systems for smallholder farmers in the MENA region.

Abstract

Drip irrigation is a micro-irrigation technology that has been shown to conserve water and signiﬁcantly increase crop yield. This technology could be particularly beneﬁcial to the world’s estimated 500 million smallholder farmers, but drip systems tend to be ﬁnancially inaccessible to this population. Drip systems require costly components including a pipe network, emitters, a pump and power system. Due to limited access to electricity, many smallholder farmers would require off-grid solutions. Designing reliable,low cost,off-griddrip irrigation systems for smallholder farms could signiﬁcantly reduce the barrier to adoption. This paper builds on an integrated solar-powered drip irrigation model that was shown to improve upon an existing software. Field trials of the small-scale drip system were conducted on research farms in Jordan and Morocco for a full growing season. Data collected from these ﬁeld trials are used to validate the hydraulics portion of the systems-level model. In addition, the insights gained from the ﬁeld trials were formed into design requirements for future iterations of the model. These include optimizing for the system life cycle cost, as opposed to capital cost, the ability to simulate the system operation over a season, the capability to input auser’s irrigation schedule, in corporating locally-available components, and incorporating a system reliability constraint based on more detailed agronomic calculations.