Hortau in BC
Hortau, an irrigation automation company based in California and Quebec, has developed a new technology that measures plant stress and lets growers know precisely when to water their plants and by how much.
Sensors embedded in the soil capture the situation in the fields, so growers can manage their irrigation remotely. Hortau uses smart objects (IoT) to connect fields to cloud‑based irrigation management software, so farmers can reduce the amount of water, energy, fertilizer, and pesticides they need to grow healthy crops.
Before Hortau, despite sinking a lot of money into irrigation systems, growers still didn’t know exactly when to irrigate their fields and by how much. They went at it by ‘gut feeling’ or with the help of an almanac. As a result, they often over‑irrigated, water logging their fields and washing away precious fertilizer and pesticides in the process. That’s millions of dollars down the drain. They also had to keep a constant eye on their fields and direct their sprinklers. Yet their crop yields didn’t necessarily reflect all that hard work.
Hortau’s technology is aimed at making that kind of inefficiency a thing of the past.
