Drip irrigation makes it possible to standardize the availability of sugarcane in the industry throughout the harvest

Harvested practically all year round in Brazil, south-central from April to November and northeast from August to March, the sugarcane complex is responsible for generating large foreign exchange for the country, giving us the title of largest producer of ethanol and sugar in the world.

However, maintaining this global leadership is not easy, especially for the agricultural sector, which faces the great challenge of maintaining the level of supply of raw material, sugar cane, for the industry throughout the harvest.

As seen in the illustration above presented by Landell, director of IAC – Centro de Cana, there is a “normal” decrease in the productivity of sugarcane fields harvested from the middle to the end of the harvest. And this decrease is highly linked to the increase in the normal water deficit in the cycle. I say normal, as the water regime in the central south region is characterized by concentrated rainfall between the months of November and March and, after that, as Tom Jobim would say, “It's the waters of March closing the summer” and we enter the dry period. But, I would add, closing the summer and starting the agricultural harvest. Adverse weather factors only help to increase this drop in productivity. And this decrease leads the industry to become idle, since its grinding capacity is the same throughout the year.

And the big question is: is there a way to mitigate or correct this decline? The answer is yes.

If the main reason for the drop in productivity is the increase in water deficit, simply irrigating the sugarcane fields will increase productivity. And can I use any irrigation method? That's where the difference lies.

Using traditional irrigation methods, such as spraying, would be inefficient to irrigate adult sugarcane fields, firstly because it is very difficult to access the sugarcane field after the inter-row closure and, in addition, there are other loss factors such as wind, evaporation and the umbrella effect. , which is the retention of water in sugarcane leaves.

However, as we can see in the illustration below, with drip irrigation technology it is possible to irrigate even adult sugarcane fields. And what is the reason? The drip tubes are buried, allowing access to the plant roots at all times, thus providing water and nutrients to the plants at all times.

Plants that adopted this technology and directed it to mid- to late-harvest sugarcane fields are collecting interesting data on maintaining average productivity or even increasing the average productivity of late-harvest sugarcane fields.

Demonstrating that irrigation is not just a method to replace the lack of rain, but rather a strategic productivity technology, that is, water becomes a production input.