The Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research and Training, Ifapa, has developed an APP for the irrigation scheduling of red fruits, which was born with the name of Irrigation Berry.

This computer tool will be presented on November 18 at 11 am through a webinar that can be attended free of charge with prior registration.

This tool is the result of a trajectory of more than 10 years in research and experimentation in the irrigation of these crops.

Irrigation Berry is a free public APP developed by the Irrigation Advisory System (@riegosostenible) of the IFAPA (Institute of Agricultural and Fisheries Research and Training) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Sustainable Development of the Junta de Andalucía.

It allows customizing for each plot the watering recommendations for strawberry, raspberry and blueberry crops of the province of Huelva. The irrigation dose is oriented to obtain the maximum production optimizing the maximum water consumption, so that the crop does not suffer from water stress at any time. The irrigation recommendation is updated daily based on the AEMET weather forecast, which allows irrigation to be programmed with a weekly and / or daily horizon. The application of this irrigation management methodology in commercial production conditions has led to water savings of over 40%.

Irrigation Berry is the point of arrival of an itinerary to improve the sustainability of irrigation in the red fruits of Huelva started by IFAPA in 2010. On the road to obtaining this new irrigation management tool it has been key the public-private collaboration, oriented from the beginning to the efficient transfer of knowledge. To this end, numerous companies in the red fruit producing sector in the province of Huelva have collaborated, and even financed, the irrigation tests carried out at their own facilities, under 'real' production conditions on their commercial farms.

IFAPA's firm commitment to the transfer of knowledge to the producer sector, together with the application of innovative techniques for the active participation of end users by the @riegosostenbile group, has made Riego Berry provide a comfortable and intuitive interface aimed at easy use by farmers and field technicians, something that will be shown on November 18 in the webinar.

Irrigation Berry has been financed with the project 'Sustainable management of irrigation in intensive agriculture in Andalusia' (RTA2015-00029-C02), co-financed with FEDER funds.