New Irrigation Tool Tells if Your Water is Good Enough

Chris Beytes

To be certain your water is good enough for greenhouse or nursery use—or to test a new water source—there’s a new tool you can use that interprets water quality data and tells you if it’s suitable for irrigation.

Developed by Dr. Rosa Raudales of the University of Connecticut and Dr. Paul Fisher of the University of Florida as part of the Clean WateR3 initiative, The “WaterQual” tool lets you simply plug any of the known numbers you get from your testing lab—pH, EC, alkalinity, total dissolved salts, suspended solids and the like—and it will interpret your lab results and offer recommendations.

Check it out at http://cleanwater3.org/wqi.asp.

Clean WateR3 is a federally funded specialty crops initiative focused on research and outreach that helps growers “reduce, remediate and recycle” their irrigation water. You can subscribe to their free newsletter at http://cleanwater3.org/newsletters.asp. GT