The mango and tomato farming region of Blydepoort in Mpumalanga has installed a private irrigation network that interconnects fibre optics and telemetry to allow for total communication and control across the system.
Local farmers installed the computerised system because the old ground canal water system proved unreliable, with natural predicaments such as cave-ins affecting water delivery to farms in the area, says Peter Cherry, MD of ProDesign, the firm that integrated the system.
He says the old system had to be patrolled by inspectors to check for pressure problems or cave-ins.
The Adroit Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (Scada) system automatically monitors the water pressure and water flow at 70 stations in the system.
Cherry says the system controls the irrigation over a "vast distance", using cable layering on the power lines needed for valve control and other functionalities. The system is controlled from the main server at the operating house, which uses radio to communicate with 150 telemetry off-take stations located on individual farms.
"The Scada software is basically the window that shows what is going on in the black box based at the major stations, a remote graphic representation of what is happening in the field," says Karin Fouche, business development manager at Adroit Systems, which developed the software.
The system also makes use of SMS capability to notify operators of water pressures that are too high or low.
"The private-based pipeline system is basically a large pressure-reducing system," says Cherry.
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