Brown spots are a common problem at golf greens throughout the world. This is due to several factors. One is that areas on the green become water repellent and thus increase the resistant of water entering the soil. A more appropriate term to describe water entering the soil at the surface is infiltration. Penetration is a term better used to describe the movement of water through the subsurface layers of the soil, once it has infiltrated the surface.
An infiltration problem occurs if the irrigation water does not enter the soil rapidly enough, during a normal irrigation cycle, to replenish the soil with water needed by the crop before the next irrigation. The current solution for overcoming these problems are wetting agents that are mixed with the irrigation water to reduce surface tension in order to infiltrate the surface better and increase water uptake by the roots. Wetting agents are a chemical that are used to alter the surface tension in the water and it is also a consumable. Therefore wetting agents are only used in combination with manual watering of golf greens.
Using IVG-IR the water tended to infiltrate the green surface quicker.
Feedback has shown:
- Shorter irrigation time (up to 50%), which reduces irrigation costs and increases land availability,
- The increase in water absorption by soil and plants, even on water repellent soils,
- Reduction of water consumption (up to 30%),
- Reduction of water wastage in runoff water,
- Improving results when the use of gray water / effluents is necessary
- Less brown spots and fungal growth on greens,
- Reducing the use of chemicals (wetting agents are no longer necessary), Greener golf courses