Direct Irrigation Saves Water

Stimulation of Growth

How does Direct Irrigation stimulate growth?

There are four separate but related factors involved here.

1. The Water Well ™ is kept filled at all times, making it a reliable supply of water. In conventional irrigation or natural rainfall, moisture content of the soil varies with rainfall, time of day, and many other factors making soil an unreliable supply of water.

2. Soil absorbs water by hydrogen bonding with charged and polarized components of the soil releasing a heat of absorption. Energy is required to break these bonds and desorb the water. This energy must be provided by the plant, consuming food that could otherwise be used for growth.

3. Water in soil contains dissolved solutes which exert a negative osmotic pressure working against the process of absorption by the roots.

(Called static osmotic resistance)

4. The concentration of solutes in the boundary layer of water around the root hair increases as water flows into the root hair leaving excess solutes behind.

(Called dynamic osmotic resistance)

Direct Irrigation bypasses all of these detrimental processes

1. Constant rather than intermittant water availability.

2. No work of desorption is required since it supplies plain water directly.

3. There are no solutes and an optimum osmotic potential in plain water.

4. The solutes can not build up because there are none.

Please note that by "plain water" we denote water suitable for irrigation without added nutrients or other solutes. Obviously pure water is best, but it is prohibitively expensive. Ordinary water supplies with less than 0.1% solutes works. So when we say "no solutes" above, we refer to the ideal situation of pure water. In practice, there are always some solutes in irrigation water, but the less the better. In particular, water containing significant mineral content must not be used. This unusable water includes some well water, brackish water, water produced by reverse osmosis desalination systems. Also, fertilizer macronutrients (soluble compounds of nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium and sulfur) must not be added to the Water Well ™ since they will counteract the benefitial effects of Direct Irrigation.