DRIP IRRIGATION

Drip irrigation uses tubing to deliver a small volume of water directly to the roots of the plants being cultivated. This uses the bare minimum amount of water necessary to grow a full, healthy crop. Drip irrigation is widely regarded as the most efficient method of watering certain crops. It can take as little as one third of the water used to flood irrigate.

Most drip irrigation products are composed of a tube studded with hundreds of complex plastic parts called "emitters" that can deliver a constant dribble of water to each plant. These emitters allow farmers to run much longer tubes at higher pressures while maintaining uniform water distribution. In some cases the tubing "laterals" can stretch for hundreds of meters in length.

For large farmers, the increase in tubing length justifies the additional cost of these complex emitters. Unfortunately, the majority of farmers around the world have plots of land too small to take advantage of this feature. For them, the current emitter solutions add unnecessary cost and complexity. Ultimately, these existing drip irrigation products don't work for subsistence and smallholder farmers.

THE DRIPTECH ADVANTAGE

Driptech has developed a technology that eliminates the use of complex emitters, cutting the part count for a drip irrigation system dramatically and reducing costs to 1/4 of typical commercial systems. Reducing complexity also improves reliability and ease of maintenance.

In a Driptech system the water is delivered via precisely punched holes in low-cost plastic tubing. This means installation only requires a farmer to roll out the tubing and connect it to a central pipe fed by an elevated container of water.

Driptech has created the simplest, most affordable, and most field-ready drip irrigation system. This provides a cost-effective means for even the poorest farmers to increase their water use efficiency, growing more crops to feed their families and bring to market.