A short description of the project

The objective of the project is to promote fertigation in irrigated agriculture in Romania, fertigation being a modern concept of agriculture technique through which fertilizing substances are administered to plants simultaneously with the irrigation water.
In this regard, there will be elaborated fertigation working technologies for the main horticultural species in protected areas and for fruit culturing, there will be designed and developed innovative fertigation equipment, with significant market potential.
The absolute novelty in developing the device for injecting the primary solution (the double diaphragm pump) consists in assimilation of a hydraulic inverter, original concept, with the role of changing the direction of travel of pump mobile assembly, which will also be under application for a national patent. The driving fluid for pump actuation in order to perform injection of primary solution will be represented by water taken out of the supply pipeline of the irrigation facility, which gives it operational autonomy in any point of the arrangement for irrigation.

The mission of this project and partnership is to design, develop and test technical solutions for innovative fertigation equipment, which should help to reduce significantly the environmental impact of chemical fertilizers through:

> removing volatile pollutants emitted in the atmosphere;
> eliminating the risk of groundwater pollution;
> reducing the concentration of nitrite and nitrate in agricultural products, with direct implications for human health;
> reducing the amount of labor involved in agricultural technological processes;
> reducing energy consumption.

The project will include activities of industrial research, experimental development, protecting intellectual property rights, dissemination of results. Key activities of the project are design and development of experimental models of fertigation equipment and also elaboration of fertigation technologies, by which the project can be regarded as having significant impact on research and innovation.
Sales market for the designed fertigation equipment, by which the elaborated fertigation technologies will be implemented, addresses the main horticultural crops in protected areas and fruit crops, owned by farmers in Romania.