Past Winner
2015 NSERC Synergy Awards for Innovation

The research team of Professor Jean Caron of Université Laval and its industry partners are optimizing irrigation techniques for organic soils in vegetable production to enhance crop productivity and achieve significant water and energy savings. This successful partnership allows vegetable producers to do real-time monitoring of the water requirements of planted lettuce by incorporating innovative knowledge into an interactive precision irrigation software tool. The monitoring is based on soil, crop, and future weather conditions. Precision irrigation has increased Romaine lettuce yields by as much as 40% and enhanced the efficiency of water and energy use associated with irrigation by 15% to 25%. Its application will be extended to other crops such as spinach, mesclun (spring mix), corn and potatoes.

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