Overview of New Technology in Water Application for Ornamental Plant Production

The efficient use of water for containerized plant production in Florida has been a major concern for many years. Today, this concern is greater than before because of the diminishing fresh water resources and increasing water quality problems in many areas. In Florida, withdrawal of fresh water for irrigation, including container-grown ornamental plants, represents the largest of the state's water pumping demands. Agriculture in Florida uses 12.3 million cubic meters of fresh water meters per day. The typical daily application of fresh water used by the container nurseries is on average 7 mm day which amounts to 250 m³⋅ha day^–1. Traditionally container-grown ornamental plants have been overhead irrigated, yet only 20% of the water applied by this system is actually used by the plant. For proper plant development containers often require significant amount of space between containers, which leads to increased runoff of unused irrigation water. Concerns of depletion and contamination of water sources by nursery and other industries has initiated programs for water conservation and regulation standards. An alternative to overhead irrigation is micro-irrigation, use of spray stakes or drippers, which has been shown to reduce runoff and nutrient loss while maintaining equal or improved plant growth. A system that can produce further reduction on water use is the Multi-pot Box System Water (MPBS). A study using microirrigation together with the MBPS showed reduced water run-off and optimized irrigation efficiency on the production of a woody ornamental. This paper will (1) analyze the efficiency of the MPBS compared to a conventional system used in nurseries growing containerized ornamentals, (2) measure the amount of water used by both systems, and the quality of the runoff water, and (3) compare growth indicators of seven species of ornamentals grown under both systems.