Irrigation and Fertigation Management: tools that have helped in the production of specialty coffee

Coffee is the second most consumed drink in the world, behind only water, and the domestic and foreign markets are increasingly seeking higher quality coffees (Cooxupé, 2020). This has caused coffee growers to look for techniques that help to obtain a high quality product to meet the market needs, and some of these techniques are irrigation and fertigation.

Fertigation is a technique that consists of applying a nutrient solution via an irrigation system, that is, water plus nutrients, thus keeping the bulb moist close to the roots enriched with fertilizers, this environment being conducive to the development and growth of plants.

Fertigation management has been increasingly used by Brazilian coffee growers, with the aim of extracting maximum efficiency from fertilizers, greater use by plants, reducing costs with labor and machinery and even the possibility of more installments in fertilization, when compared to conventional fertilization.

But how does fertigation help in the production of quality coffee? With the possibility of supplying nutrients according to your demand within each phenological phase. For example, in conventional fertilization, NPK is supplied in 3 or 4 installments, whereas with qualitative fertigation we are able to apply small parts of the nutrient in each irrigation and also provide each nutrient separately for greater demand in that phenological phase. An example is the occasional application of potassium during the grain filling phase, considering that it is a fertilizer linked to the formation of sugars in the grain.

Fertigation is an application of nutrients "in the veins" of plants, thus making them readily available, resulting in healthy plants and grains, free from pests and diseases and complete maturation, reducing the amount of green grains, green sugarcane or black green grains.

Of course, all this combined with adequate cultural management, responsive variety, altitude, conscious management of irrigation and fertigation. In addition to fertigation, irrigation alone already helps in the production process of specialty coffees, in addition to providing water at critical moments of the crop, adequate management of irrigation at the time of pre-flowering, promotes the reduction of multi-flowered, cuttlefish grains and poorly grained, thus resulting in larger, more uniform grains with superior sifting.

In this way, irrigation and fertigation technology combined with the appropriate management of coffee crops has allowed producers to add value to their product, with greater appreciation for quality, which is a strong trend in the market, in addition to providing a more profitable and sustainable business.