Recipient Organization
CLEMSON UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
CLEMSON,SC 29634
Performing Department
Plant & Environmental Sciences
Non Technical Summary
Specialty crop producers are highly productive per unit area and require intensive inputs, including water, fertilizer, pesticides, energy, and other resources. Stormwater and irrigation return flow from specialty crop production can carry particulates, agrichemicals, heat, and plant diseases into water storage reservoirs, off-site into surface waters, or a combination thereof. Irrigation management practices affect nutrient uptake by plants and the loss of nutrients as water moves through containers. Emerging constraints on water use and quality mean that the green industry needs to identify ways to manage water without negatively impacting marketable yields per area and year. A multistate, multidisciplinary research and extension group is necessary to address the broad range of water quantity, quality, and plant production issues in the green industry. To help solve these research and extension needs, this project has identified five principal areas of concern. These include (1) the quality of irrigation water sources, (2) irrigation management and water conservation, (3) crop production runoff management, (4) urban stormwater, and (5) soilless culture.
Animal Health Component
70%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
30%
Applied
70%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
Water quality of irrigation sources. Characterize the quality of alternative or non-traditional water sources in different regions of the U.S. Determine water quality parameters and levels that are most limiting for intensive plant production systems and evaluate treatment and management options to overcome the limiting factors.
Crop production runoff management. Address research and extension needs related to enhancing containment of production runoff and improving recycled water management by identifying and characterizing critical control points within production systems, further developing chemical, physical, and biologically-based water treatment technologies and providing BMP guidelines to mitigate adverse effects of sediment, agrichemicals, and pests in production runoff, irrigation reservoirs, and other water sources.
Urban stormwater. Improve the design of biological urban stormwater systems to better reduce and remediate stormwater runoff from various sources, addressing issues of water volume, intensity, quality, and reuse. Focus on the use of novel biological and engineered systems and materials (e.g. organic/inorganic substrates and amendments) which mitigate runoff and pollutants, as well as the use of woody and herbaceous plants, in single or combined (treatment train approach) systems in greenhouse, nursery, and urban production environments.
Improved irrigation management. Determine the water quality and quantity requirements of different plant production systems with varied container sizes and environmental conditions. Compare irrigation methods (e.g. overhead, spray stakes, drip irrigation, subirrigation) to determine how they affect total water use, plant growth and quality, and runoff water quality. Identify methods to reduce water use, leaching, and runoff and quantify results from more efficient techniques. Develop new and optimize existing irrigation methods that are easily deployed in intensive plant production systems to provide growers with real-time information regarding water requirements and environmental conditions of their crops. Evaluate the compatibility of low-quality water with irrigation methods and systems.
Soilless culture and nutrient management. Assess physical, chemical, and biological properties of soilless culture systems or components for their impact on plant health and vigor, water reuse and subsequent use efficiency, nutrient delivery and retention, crop fertility, and environmental impact for a variety of important controlled environment and urban crops throughout the U.S. Expand our knowledge of how soilless culture systems affect plant productivity, root growth, plant pathogen or weed pressure, and dynamic physicochemical properties including hydraulic conductivity, pH, cation and anion exchange, plant-water availability, gas exchange and moisture retention.
Project Methods
Objective 1. Water quality of irrigation sourcesWork with external collaborators to gather, collate, model, and interpret runoff-related water quality data from nursery and greenhouse operations across the U.S., and analyze on a regional basis.Assess risks associated with water quality parameters that influence plant growth and categorize their potential impacts on plant production through plant studies.Assess water quality factors that affect accumulation of biofilm, algae, and plant pathogens on irrigation systems.Evaluate commercial practices and emerging research-based technologies in order to identify best management strategies to:monitor and interpret water quality;manage high levels of salts, alkalinity and specific ions;remediate agrichemical, pesticide, and other contaminants in conventional and alternative irrigation water sources;provide geographic analyses and visualization of water quality issues for specialty crops;successfully produce crops and maintain urban landscapes and gardens with low quality water sources, selecting plants/crops, irrigation practices and equipment most suitable to the chemical, physical and biological profiles of water sources available in each region.SC has constructed replicated beds to measure water infiltration vs surface flow for 3 common bed materialsSC will continue to evaluate slow sand filters for plant pathogen and agrichemical removalCA, FL, MD, MI, SC and MISC will evaluate commercial irrigation reservoirs to develop case studies and best management practices on monitoring, including chemical quality, pesticide contaminants, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, and recommended remediation methods.Objective 2. Improved irrigationDetermine the irrigation efficiency and economic returns of various impact, micro, and drip irrigation systems.SC will test irrigation system efficiency for a number of impact, micro irrigation and drip irrigation systems. Distribution uniformity, wear over time, influence of wind and other parameters will be tested.Objective 3. Crop production runoff managementIdentify, adapt, and assess select filtration and chemically- and biologically-based treatment technologies to manage nutrient, pesticide, particulate, pathogenic, and biological contaminants in production runoff.Develop and evaluate treatment technologies at laboratory, pilot, and commercial scales, focusing on the performance of individual and integrated treatment systems.Evaluate bioreactors hydraulic retention times and placement to improve water quality as appropriate to recycling (remove pesticides but retain nutrients).Determine ideal combination and placement of treatment technologies in series to remove/remediate various agrochemicals from discharged water.SC will use medium scale slow sand filters to determine their effectiveness at removing plant pathogens and agrichemicals from runoff water following protocols established by members of the group.SC and USDA-ARS will develop Fe-enriched substrates that sorb or to filter phosphates from container leachates or other off-site release (remove all agrochemicals).Lead collaborators: CA, CT, FL, MI, SC, USDA-ARSObjective 4. Urban stormwaterIdentify research priorities and needs related to urban stormwater management, based on survey responses and stakeholder input.Develop and integrate treatment technologies for urban/green infrastructural stormwater management systems, which link stormwater reduction structures on rooftops (e.g., green roofs and urban farms) to micro-infiltration sites (e.g., bioretention cells and functional landscapes) at ground level.Objective 5. Soilless culture and nutrient managementThis approach would combine precision irrigation management techniques (Obj. 2) with novel soilless culture techniques to maximize stormwater retention and minimize agrichemical runoff (Obj. 3).Lead collaborators: CA, MD, SC