The French Nurseries Combatting Drought With Precision Irrigation

This article appeared on 15 August 2022 in Ouest-France, written by Sarah Humbert. The original article can be accessed here (in French).

Finally, it has rained a little in the area of Morlaix. However, these few drops are not going to solve the drought that has been affecting Finistère (Northwest France) for several months. In Plourin-lès-Morlaix, Daniel Trévien has been selling fruit trees for some forty years. He is a member of the Kerisnel group. He explains: “We’re always on the edge, it’s a very stressful job. It’s like that as soon as you work with living things. One year, we’ll be worried about a storm, another about disease. Now it’s drought,” he says.

Precision irrigation to decrease water use

On 10 August, the department went into drought crisis and a prefectural decree was issued to limit, or even prohibit, the use of water in various sectors. With his nursery, Daniel Trévien can, for the moment, “continue to water. I only water at night and I have a drip system, which limits losses,” he explains. He waters his trees three times a day, for about ten minutes, thanks to a borehole “that goes down to 80 metres. If we leave it for two days without watering, it’s ruined,” he explains. He owns 65,000 trees, “walnut trees, chestnut trees, apple trees, pear trees, fig trees and almond trees”, which he sells to Kerisnel and which are then sent all over France.

For a few months now, Daniel Trévien has been equipped with an AQUA4D® system, installed at the pump outlet, which, once the water has been pumped up and before it goes to irrigate the young trees, “modifies the physical constitution of the water. In fact, it breaks down the molecules,” he explains. Thanks to this, “the water diffuses better into the plants. This limits the loss of 40 to 50%. If he compares his consumption over the same period, between 2021 and 2022, “I have used 30% less water at the moment”.

Uncertainty for the years ahead

Trévien adds: “Today, there are possibilities to manage less water consumption”. He estimates that he injects about “100 m3 of water daily”. In spite of this watering, “the trees are still there, but they are not growing, there is heat stress”. He is already planning to apply “Bordeaux mixture in the next few days to strengthen the plants against bacteria and fortify them for the winter. We usually do this on 15 September”, he says, “I’ve never seen conditions like this”.

He fears for the coming season. For several years now, he has not been grafting his own plants, but buying them from abroad. But “it’s getting harder and harder to find young plants. At this time of year, fruit trees are grafted a lot, but if you can’t water them, the plant doesn’t grow. There may be supply problems in the years to come,” he concludes.

Daniel Trévien has been running nurseries for 40 years and has never seen conditions like this, but he’s adapting. Photo credit: Ouest-France

Daniel Trévien (left) and Thierry Koch (right) from AQUA4D