Testing automatic irrigation in paddy rice fields: lesson learned in a northern Italy rice farm

Rice is one of the major staple food crops in the world. In Europe, Italy is the main rice producer, with almost all of the production concentrated in the north-east of the country. Traditionally rice is grown in fields flooded from before seeding to close to harvest. This water management technique requires a huge labor for farmers who have to manually adjust inlet and outlet gates in order to maintain a constant ponding water level in the fields. A new water soft-path strategy based on the introduction of automatic water flow rate regulation systems is under investigation in a rice farm of about 40 ha located south of Milan, in northern Italy. The general purpose of the experimental activity is: (i) to test their reliability in a traditional rice context, and (ii) to assess their environmental and economic sustainability. The installed instrumentation is constituted by four PikoGate® automatic gates positioned in strategic points of the farm irrigation canal network and Ferit® water level sensors installed in five groups of fields. To date, automatic gates and water level sensors have been installed and tested, and a new irrigation algorithm has been implemented to allow the automatic management of a predetermined ponding water level in the fields, which may change in time based on sitespecific conditions. Results achieved so far will be presented describing the adopted automatic solutions and their responsiveness to the site-specific conditions.