Spagnol's technicians, thanks to their expertise and to the desire for innovation shown by Azienda Vivaistica Cerrato from Paestum, have perfected a system for the management of water sources in cultivations, meaning optimization of water intervention and therefore an improvement in production quality. Water management in cultivations has a very important role even in nurseries. First of all, it's useful so as not to expose cultivations to too much or too little nutrient solution, second of all, for the maintenance of a good physiological equilibrium in the substrate and thirdly, in limiting the onset of pathogens due to excessive environmental humidity provoked by unnecessary irrigations.

Below the main reasons that create difficult water management in the nursery environment are listed:

  • the area to be covered is vast (personnel cannot diligently control the cultivations)
  • there are sudden changes in climatic conditions
  • there are various varieties of crops
  • there are different growing stages for the same crop variety.

For this reason, Spagnol, as per Azienda Vivaistica Cerrato's request, developed an automatic water management system for young plants in their nursery. The system works on the basis of the SCALEMATIC principal. This device, already known for water management in soil-less cultivation, measures the difference in weight between dry and wet substrate. Our computerized greenhouse management system collects the data from the various SCALEMATICs installed in the greenhouse and manages the start of the mobile irrigation booms and of the fertigation computer.

The SCALEMATIC software decides how many times and when irrigation should start on the basis of weight difference, time slots, outdoor and indoor climate conditions.

During the planning of the weighing device the following requirements were taken into consideration:

  • the micro-climate above and below the container sample had to correspond to the one in other containers to obtain reliable information
  • easy and flexible installation so that it could be installed in the various productive conditions
  • Scalematic takes up only 0,5 cm more with respect to other containers; therefore, it can be positioned like any other container without the help of supports or particular bases!
  • totally compatibility with the cultivation environment, resistance to humidity, resistance to washing, resistance to aggressive substances that can be found in the cultivations treatments.

Last, but not least, the electronic aspects were also kept in mind. Scalematic can be connected to other Spagnol products like the fertigation computers or the climate control computers and therefore can also be managed by the Mc-Net 4 supervision.

It can also be connected to an autonomous management device to be then connected to any irrigation device (mobile boom or nebulization system).

Even in this case, Spagnol has shown how close it is to the client's needs to offer an efficient product/service that will increase production quality standards resulting in an improvement in Azienda Vivaistica Cerrato's image on the market.
When it's useful
Planning criteria
Connection possibilities
MC-Net 4 supervision